THE HACKER TEST - Version 3.0

• Have you ever used a computer? Yes No
  • for more than 4 hours continuously? Yes No
  • for more than 8 hours? Yes No
  • for more than 16 hours? Yes No
  • for more than 32 hours? Yes No
• Have you ever patched paper tape? Yes No
• While programming, have you ever missed a class? Yes No
  • Missed an examination? Yes No
  • Missed a wedding? Yes No
  • Missed your own wedding? Yes No
• Have you ever programmed while intoxicated? Yes No
  • Did it make sense the next day? Yes No
• Have you ever written a flight simulator? Yes No
• Have you ever voided the warranty on your equipment? Yes No
• Ever change the value of 4? Yes No
  • Unintentionally? Yes No
  • In a language other than Fortran? Yes No
• Do you use DWIM to make life interesting? Yes No
• Have you named a computer? Yes No
• Do you complain when a "feature" you use gets fixed? Yes No
• Do you eat slime-molds? Yes No
• Do you know how many days old you are? Yes No
• Have you ever wanted to download pizza? Yes No
• Have you ever invented a computer joke? Yes No
  • Did someone not 'get' it? Yes No
• Can you recite Jabberwocky? Yes No
  • Backwards? Yes No
• Have you seen "Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land"? Yes No
• Have you seen "Tron"? Yes No
• Have you seen "Wargames"? Yes No
• Do you know what ASCII stands for? Yes No
  • EBCDIC? Yes No
• Can you read and write ASCII in hex or octal? Yes No
• Do you know the names of all the ASCII control codes? Yes No
• Can you read and write EBCDIC in hex? Yes No
• Can you convert from EBCDIC to ASCII and vice versa? Yes No
• Do you know what characters are the same in both ASCII and EBCDIC? Yes No
• Do you know maxint on your system? Yes No
• Ever define your own numerical type to get better precision? Yes No
• Can you name powers of two up to 2**16 in arbitrary order? Yes No
  • up to 2**32? Yes No
  • up to 2**64? Yes No
• Can you read a punched card, looking at the holes? Yes No
  • feeling the holes? Yes No
• Have you ever patched binary code? Yes No
  • While the program was running? Yes No
• Have you ever used program overlays? Yes No
• Have you met any IBM vice-president? Yes No
• Do you know Dennis, Bill, or Ken? Yes No
• Have you ever taken a picture of a CRT? Yes No
• Have you ever played a videotape on your CRT? Yes No
• Have you ever digitized a picture? Yes No
• Did you ever forget to mount a scratch monkey? Yes No
• Have you ever optimized an idle loop? Yes No
• Did you ever optimize a bubble sort? Yes No
• Does your terminal/computer talk to you? Yes No
• Have you ever talked into an acoustic modem? Yes No
  • Did it answer? Yes No
• Can you whistle 300 baud? Yes No
  • 1200 baud? Yes No
• Can you whistle a telephone number? Yes No
• Have you witnessed a disk crash? Yes No
• Have you made a disk drive "walk"? Yes No
• Can you build a puffer train? Yes No
  • Do you know what it is? Yes No
• Can you play music on your line printer? Yes No
  • Your disk drive? Yes No
  • Your tape drive? Yes No
• Do you have a Snoopy calendar? Yes No
  • Is it out-of-date? Yes No
• Do you have a line printer picture of;
  • Woody Allen? Yes No
  • the Mona Lisa? Yes No
  • the Enterprise? Yes No
  • Einstein? Yes No
  • Oliver? Yes No
• Have you ever made a line printer picture? Yes No
• Have you ever had your face on a line printer picture? Yes No
• Do you know what this stands for?
  • DASD Yes No
  • Emacs Yes No
  • ITS Yes No
  • RSTS/E Yes No
  • SNA Yes No
  • Spool Yes No
  • TCP/IP Yes No
• Have you ever used;
  • TPU? Yes No (editor, not turbo pascal unit)
  • TECO? Yes No
  • Emacs? Yes No
  • ed? Yes No
  • vi? Yes No
  • Xedit (in VM/CMS)? Yes No
  • SOS? Yes No
  • EDT? Yes No
  • Wordstar? Yes No
• Have you ever written a CLIST? Yes No
• Have you ever programmed in;
  • the X windowing system? Yes No
  • CICS? Yes No
• Have you ever received a Fax or a photocopy of a floppy? Yes No
• Have you ever shown a novice the "any" key? Yes No
  • Was it the power switch? Yes No
• Have you ever attended;
  • Usenix? Yes No
  • DECUS? Yes No
  • SHARE? Yes No
  • SIGGRAPH? Yes No
  • NetCon? Yes No
• Have you ever participated in a standards group? Yes No
• Have you ever debugged machine code over the telephone? Yes No
• Have you ever seen voice mail? Yes No
  • Can you read it? Yes No
• Do you solve word puzzles with an on-line dictionary? Yes No
• Have you ever taken a Turing test? Yes No
  • Did you fail? Yes No
• Ever drop a card deck? Yes No
  • Did you successfully put it back together? Yes No
  • Without looking? Yes No
• Have you ever used IPCS? Yes No
• Have you ever received a case of beer with your computer? Yes No
• Does your computer come in 'designer' colors? Yes No
• Ever interrupted a UPS? Yes No
• Ever mask an NMI? Yes No
• Have you ever set off a Halon system? Yes No
  • Intentionally? Yes No
  • Do you still work there? Yes No
• Have you ever hit the emergency power switch? Yes No
  • Intentionally? Yes No
• Do you have any defunct documentation? Yes No
  • Do you still read it? Yes No
• Ever reverse-engineer or decompile a program? Yes No
  • Did you find bugs in it? Yes No
• Ever help the person behind the counter with their terminal/computer? Yes No
• Ever tried rack mounting your telephone? Yes No
• Ever thrown a computer from more than two stories high? Yes No
• Ever patched a bug the vendor does not acknowledge? Yes No
• Ever fix a hardware problem in software? Yes No
  • Vice versa? Yes No
• Ever belong to a user/support group? Yes No
• Ever been mentioned in Computer Recreations? Yes No
• Ever had your activities mentioned in the newspaper? Yes No
  • Did you get away with it? Yes No
• Ever engage a drum brake while the drum was spinning? Yes No
• Ever write comments in a non-native language? Yes No
• Ever physically destroy equipment from software? Yes No
• Ever tried to improve your score on the Hacker Test? Yes No
• Do you take listings with you to lunch? Yes No
  • To bed? Yes No
• Ever patch a microcode bug? Yes No
  • around a microcode bug? Yes No
• Can you program a Turing machine? Yes No
• Can you convert postfix to prefix in your head? Yes No
• Can you convert hex to octal in your head? Yes No
• Do you know how to use a Kleene star? Yes No
• Have you ever starved while dining with philosophers? Yes No
• Have you solved the halting problem? Yes No
  • Correctly? Yes No
• Ever deadlock trying eating spaghetti? Yes No
• Ever written a self-reproducing program? Yes No
• Ever swapped out the swapper? Yes No
• Can you read a state diagram? Yes No
  • Do you need one? Yes No
• Ever create an unkillable program? Yes No
  • Intentionally? Yes No
• Ever been asked for a cookie? Yes No
• Ever speed up a system by removing a jumper? Yes No
• Do you know;
  • who wrote Rogue? Yes No
  • who wrote Rogomatic? Yes No
• Do you know Gray code? Yes No
• Do you know what HCF means? Yes No
  • Ever use it? Yes No
  • Intentionally? Yes No
• Do you know what a lace card is? Yes No
  • Ever make one? Yes No
• Do you know the end of the epoch? Yes No
  • Have you celebrated the end of an epoch? Yes No
  • Did you have to rewrite code? Yes No
• Do you know the difference between DTE and DCE? Yes No
• Do you know the RS-232C pinout? Yes No
  • Can you wire a connector without looking? Yes No
• Do you have;
  • a copy of Dec Wars? Yes No
  • the Canonical Collection of Lightbulb Jokes? Yes No
  • a copy of the Hacker's dictionary? Yes No
    • Did you contribute to it? Yes No
  • a flowchart template? Yes No
    • Is it unused? Yes No
  • your own fortune-cookie file? Yes No
  • the Anarchist's Cookbook? Yes No
    • Ever make anything from it? Yes No
• Do you own;
  • a modem? Yes No
  • a terminal? Yes No
  • a toy computer? Yes No
  • a personal computer? Yes No
  • a minicomputer? Yes No
  • a mainframe? Yes No
  • a supercomputer? Yes No
  • a hypercube? Yes No
  • a printer? Yes No
  • a laser printer? Yes No
  • a tape drive? Yes No
  • an outmoded peripheral device? Yes No
• Do you have a programmable calculator? Yes No
  • Is it RPN? Yes No
• Have you ever owned more than 1 computer? Yes No
  • 4 computers? Yes No
  • 16 computers? Yes No
• Do you have a SLIP line? Yes No
  • a T1 line? Yes No
• Do you have a separate phone line for your terminal/computer? Yes No
  • Is it illegal? Yes No
• Do you have core memory? Yes No
  • drum storage? Yes No
  • bubble memory? Yes No
• Do you use more than;
  • 16 megabytes of disk space? Yes No
  • 256 megabytes? Yes No
  • 1 gigabyte? Yes No
  • 16 gigabytes? Yes No
  • 256 gigabytes? Yes No
  • 1 terabyte? Yes No
• Do you have an optical disk/disk drive? Yes No
• Do you have a personal magnetic tape library? Yes No
  • Is it unlabelled? Yes No
• Do you own more than 16 floppy disks? Yes No
  • 64 floppy disks? Yes No
  • 256 floppy disks? Yes No
  • 1024 floppy disks? Yes No
• Do you have any 8-inch disks? Yes No
• Do you have an internal stack? Yes No
• Do you have a clock interrupt? Yes No
• Do you own volumes 1 to 3 of _The Art of Computer Programming_? Yes No
  • Have you done all the exercises? Yes No
  • Do you have a MIX simulator? Yes No
  • Can you name the unwritten volumes? Yes No
• Can you quote from _The Mythical Man-month_? Yes No
  • Did you participate in the OS/360 project? Yes No
• Do you have a TTL handbook? Yes No
• Do you have printouts more than three years old? Yes No

Career;

• Do you have a job? Yes No
  • Have you ever had a job? Yes No
  • Was it computer-related? Yes No
• Do you work irregular hours? Yes No
• Have you ever been a system administrator? Yes No
• Do you have more megabytes than megabucks? Yes No
• Have you ever downgraded your job to upgrade your processing power? Yes No
• Is your job secure? Yes No
  • Do you have code to prove it? Yes No
• Have you ever had a security clearance? Yes No

Games

• Have you ever played Pong? Yes No
• Have you ever won Pong? Yes No
• Have you ever played;
  • Spacewar? Yes No
  • Star Trek? Yes No
  • Wumpus? Yes No
  • Lunar Lander? Yes No
  • Empire? Yes No
• Have you ever beaten;
  • Moria 4.8? Yes No
  • Rogue 3.6? Yes No
  • Rogue 5.3? Yes No
  • Larn? Yes No
  • Hack 1.0.3? Yes No
  • Nethack 2.4? Yes No
• Can you get a better score on Rogue than Rogomatic? Yes No
• Have you ever solved Adventure? Yes No
  • Zork? Yes No
• Have you ever written any redcode? Yes No
• Have you ever written an adventure program? Yes No
  • a real-time game? Yes No
  • a multi-player game? Yes No
  • a networked game? Yes No
• Can you out-doctor Eliza? Yes No

Hardware:

• Have you ever used a light pen? Yes No
  • did you build it? Yes No
• Have you ever used;
  • a teletype? Yes No
  • a paper tape? Yes No
  • a decwriter? Yes No
  • a card reader/punch? Yes No
  • a SOL? Yes No
• Have you ever built;
  • an Altair? Yes No
  • a Heath/Zenith computer? Yes No
• Do you know how to use;
  • an oscilliscope? Yes No
  • a voltmeter? Yes No
  • a frequency counter? Yes No
  • a logic probe? Yes No
  • a wirewrap tool? Yes No
  • a soldering iron? Yes No
  • a logic analyzer? Yes No
• Have you ever designed an LSI chip? Yes No
  • has it been fabricated? Yes No
• Have you ever etched a printed circuit board? Yes No

Historical:

• Have you ever toggled in boot code on the front panel? Yes No
  • from memory? Yes No
• Can you program an Eniac? Yes No
• Ever seen a 90 column card? Yes No

IBM

• Do you recite IBM part numbers in your sleep? Yes No
• Do you know what IBM part number 7320154 is? Yes No
• Do you understand 3270 data streams? Yes No
• Do you know what the VM privilege classes are? Yes No
• Have you IPLed an IBM off the tape drive? Yes No
  • off a card reader? Yes No
• Can you sing something from the IBM Songbook? Yes No

Languages:

• Do you know more than 4 programming languages? Yes No
  • 8 languages? Yes No
  • 16 languages? Yes No
  • 32 languages? Yes No
• Have you ever designed a programming language? Yes No
• Do you know what Basic stands for? Yes No
  • Pascal? Yes No
• Can you program in Basic? Yes No
  • Do you admit it? Yes No
• Can you program in Cobol? Yes No
  • Do you deny it? Yes No
• Do you know;
  • Pascal? Yes No
  • Modula-2? Yes No
  • Oberon? Yes No
  • More than two Wirth languages? Yes No
  • a Nicklaus Wirth joke? Yes No
  • Algol-60? Yes No
  • Algol-W? Yes No
  • Algol-68? Yes No
• Do you understand the Algol-68 report? Yes No
• Do you like two-level grammars? Yes No
• Can you program in assembler on 2 different machines? Yes No
  • on 4 different machines? Yes No
  • on 8 different machines? Yes No
• Do you know;
  • APL? Yes No
  • Ada? Yes No
  • BCPL? Yes No
  • C++? Yes No
  • C? Yes No
  • Comal? Yes No
  • Eiffel? Yes No
  • Forth? Yes No
  • Fortran? Yes No
  • Hypertalk? Yes No
  • Icon? Yes No
  • Lisp? Yes No
  • Logo? Yes No
  • MIIS? Yes No
  • MUMPS? Yes No
  • PL/I? Yes No
  • Pilot? Yes No
  • Plato? Yes No
  • Prolog? Yes No
  • RPG? Yes No
  • Rexx (or ARexx)? Yes No
  • SETL? Yes No
  • Smalltalk? Yes No
  • Snobol? Yes No
  • VHDL? Yes No
  • any assembly language? Yes No
• Can you talk VT-100? Yes No
  • Postscript? Yes No
  • SMTP? Yes No
  • UUCP? Yes No
  • English? Yes No

Micros

• Ever copy a copy-protected disk? Yes No
• Ever create a copy-protection scheme? Yes No
• Have you ever made a "flippy" disk? Yes No
• Have you ever recovered data from a damaged disk? Yes No
• Ever boot a naked floppy? Yes No

Networking

• Have you ever been logged in to two different timezones at once? Yes No
• Have you memorized the UUCP map for your country? Yes No
  • For any country? Yes No
• Have you ever found a sendmail bug? Yes No
  • Was it a security hole? Yes No
• Have you memorized the HOSTS.TXT table? Yes No
  • Are you up to date? Yes No
• Can you name all the top-level nameservers and their addresses? Yes No
• Do you know RFC-822 by heart? Yes No
  • Can you recite all the errors in it? Yes No
• Have you written a Sendmail configuration file? Yes No
  • Does it work? Yes No
  • Do you mumble "defocus" in your sleep? Yes No
• Do you know the max packet lifetime? Yes No

Operating Systems

• Can you use BSD Unix? Yes No
  • non-BSD Unix? Yes No
  • AIX? Yes No
  • VM/CMS? Yes No
  • VMS? Yes No
  • MVS? Yes No
  • VSE? Yes No
  • RSTS/E? Yes No
  • CP/M? Yes No
  • COS? Yes No
  • NOS? Yes No
  • CP-67? Yes No
  • RT-11? Yes No
  • MS-DOS? Yes No
  • Finder? Yes No
  • PRODOS? Yes No
  • more than one OS for the TRS-80? Yes No
  • Tops-10? Yes No
  • Tops-20? Yes No
  • OS-9? Yes No
  • OS/2? Yes No
  • AOS/VS? Yes No
  • Multics? Yes No
  • ITS? Yes No
  • Vulcan? Yes No
• Have you ever paged or swapped off a tape drive? Yes No
  • Off a card reader/punch? Yes No
  • Off a teletype? Yes No
  • Off a networked (non-local) disk? Yes No
• Have you ever found an operating system bug? Yes No
  • Did you exploit it? Yes No
  • Did you report it? Yes No
  • Was your report ignored? Yes No
• Have you ever crashed a machine? Yes No
  • Intentionally? Yes No

People:

• Do you know any people? Yes No
  • more than one? Yes No
  • more than two? Yes No

Personal:

• Are your shoelaces untied? Yes No
• Do you interface poorly with strangers? Yes No
• Are you able to recite phone numbers for half-a-dozen computer systems but unable to recite your own? Yes No
• Do you log in before breakfast? Yes No
• Do you consume more than LD-50 caffeine a day? Yes No
• Do you answer either-or questions with "yes"? Yes No
• Do you own an up-to-date copy of any operating system manual? Yes No
  • *every* operating system manual? Yes No
• Do other people have difficulty using your customized environment? Yes No
• Do you dream in any programming languages? Yes No
• Do you have difficulty focusing on three-dimensional objects? Yes No
• Do you ignore mice? Yes No
• Do you despise the CAPS LOCK key? Yes No
• Do you believe menus belong in restaurants? Yes No
• Do you have a Mandelbrot hanging on your wall? Yes No
• Have you ever decorated with magnetic tape or punched cards? Yes No
• Do you have a disk platter or a naked floppy hanging in your home? Yes No
• Have you ever seen the dawn? Yes No
  • Twice in a row? Yes No
• Do you use "foobar" in daily conversation? Yes No
  • "bletch"? Yes No
• Do you use the "P convention"? Yes No
• Do you automatically respond to any user question with RTFM? Yes No
  • Do you know what it means? Yes No
• Do you think garbage collection means memory management? Yes No
• Do you have problems allocating horizontal space in your room/office? Yes No
• Do you read Scientific American in bars to pick up women? Yes No
• Is your license plate computer-related? Yes No
• Have you ever taken the Purity test? Yes No
• Ever have an out-of-CPU experience? Yes No
• Have you ever set up a blind date over the computer? Yes No
• Do you talk to the person next to you via computer? Yes No

Programming:

• Can you write a Fortran compiler? Yes No
  • In TECO? Yes No
• Can you read a machine dump? Yes No
• Can you disassemble code in your head? Yes No
• Have you ever written;
  • a compiler? Yes No
  • an operating system? Yes No
  • a device driver? Yes No
  • a text processor? Yes No
  • a display hack? Yes No
  • a database system? Yes No
  • an expert system? Yes No
  • an edge detector? Yes No
  • a real-time control system? Yes No
  • an accounting package? Yes No
  • a helpful virus? Yes No
  • a prophylactic? Yes No
• Have you ever written a biorhythm program? Yes No
  • Did you sell the output? Yes No
  • Was the output arbitrarily invented? Yes No
• Have you ever computed pi to more than a thousand decimal places? Yes No
  • the number e? Yes No
• Ever find a prime number of more than a hundred digits? Yes No
• Have you ever written self-modifying code? Yes No
  • Are you proud of it? Yes No
• Did you ever write a program that ran correctly the first time? Yes No
  • Was it longer than 20 lines? Yes No
  • 100 lines? Yes No
  • Was it in assembly language? Yes No
  • Did it work the second time? Yes No
• Can you solve the Towers of Hanoi recursively? Yes No
  • Non-recursively? Yes No
  • Using the Troff text formatter? Yes No
• Ever submit an entry to the Obfuscated C code contest? Yes No
  • Did it win? Yes No
  • Did your entry inspire a new rule? Yes No
• Do you know Duff's device? Yes No
• Do you know Jensen's device? Yes No
• Ever spend ten minutes trying to find a single-character error? Yes No
  • More than an hour? Yes No
  • More than a day? Yes No
  • More than a week? Yes No
  • Did the first person you show it to find it immediately? Yes No

Unix:

• Can you use Berkeley Unix? Yes No
  • Non-Berkeley Unix? Yes No
• Can you distinguish between sections 4 and 5 of the Unix manual? Yes No
• Can you find TERMIO in the System V release 2 documentation? Yes No
• Have you ever mounted a tape as a Unix file system? Yes No
• Have you ever built Minix? Yes No
• Can you answer "quiz function ed-command" correctly? Yes No
  • How about "quiz ed-command function"? Yes No

Usenet:

• Do you read news? Yes No
  • More than 32 newsgroups? Yes No
  • More than 256 newsgroups? Yes No
  • All the newsgroups? Yes No
• Have you ever posted an article? Yes No
  • Do you post regularly? Yes No
• Have you ever posted a flame? Yes No
  • Ever flame a cross-posting? Yes No
  • Ever flame a flame? Yes No
  • Do you flame regularly? Yes No
• Ever have your program posted to a source newsgroup? Yes No
• Ever forge a posting? Yes No
• Ever form a new newsgroup? Yes No
  • Does it still exist? Yes No
• Do you remember;
  • CSNEWS? Yes No
  • mod.ber? Yes No
  • the Stupid People's Court? Yes No
  • Bandy-grams Yes No

Phreaking:

• Have you ever built a black box? Yes No
• Can you name all of the 'colors' of boxes? Yes No
  • and their associated functions? Yes No
• Does your touch tone phone have 16 DTMF buttons on it? Yes No
• Did the breakup of MaBell create more opportunities for you? Yes No