Eric Raymond (ESR) has an interesting post on hacker archetypes. The list grew out of a discussion between ESR and one of his regular readers, Susan Sons. At the moment, they’ve identified 8 archetypes. You’ll want to read his post to see what they are and where you fit in but here’s an example to give you the flavor.
Algorithmicists:
- Good at algorithms and intricate coding
- High tolerance for complexity
- Good mathematical intuition
- Likes correctness proofs and thinks in terms of invariants
- Tends to gravitate to compiler writing and crypto
- Often has poor social skills
- Tends to fail by excessive cleverness
That’s just the first archetype; there are 7 more and all are described in more detail than just the list of traits I gave above. ESR says that no hacker is only one of the archetypes. He describes himself as exhibiting the traits of three of them although one does dominate. That’s probably true of most of us.
Head on over to Armed and Dangerous and see which archetypes apply to you.