[lizdenys]

> Is the OP saying that she needed to feel like a hacker to feel legitimate? That would be sad.

Hi! I am not, and I agree that it would be sad. I am happy to be satisfied with who I am, what I do, and where I'm going. I may not identify with the term "hacker" due to some of its connotations, but I do feel like I get to playfully work on difficult things--one of the few definitions of a hacker I relate to and fortunately the one that I think best embodies its true spirit.

Unfortunately, many people I know who have yet to feel established in the field do feel at least a small need to relate to the "hacker" to feel like a software engineer. As there are parts of this I could relate to (even if they are not bringing me down right now), I thought I'd share my experiences.

[robomartin]

You've accomplishe a lot. Realize you will never know everything there is to know in CS. How you approach what you don't know is what makes a difference.

There's a lot of folklore going around in places like HN. Very soon kids are going to think that if they don't use vim, reject the mouse and do away with Windows they will never be real software developers. It's a bunch of macho nonsense.

[eli_gottlieb]

Well hold on. Windows does suck, and we should do away with it!