The Hacker Test

Back in the spring semester of college, 3 students, Felix Lee, John Hayes, and Angela Thomas, created what is known in the computing community as "The Hacker Test".  Version 1.0 was officially released on June 16, 1989.

I have kept a printed copy of this test for many years.  I recently found it again – all aged and yellowed.  I wondered if the legacy of this test served after all these years.  Firing "The Hacker Test" into Google (with a qualifier of Hayes) returns back 124 hits.  Wow.  The legacy lives on!  There is even a Wikipedia entry for it.

This test was created almost 18 years ago, so much of the context for it predates modern PC computing.  Things like punch cards (go look it up), acoustic modems, and such.  It is still a great test and contains humor that only a true hacker would get.  Now I have a printed copy of the test., but in our modern Internet world you can take it directly on a web page.

If you want to check it out for yourself, here are a few great links:

• The Hacker Test (html form with good ol' green screen monochrome text terminal feel)
• The Hacker Purity Test (html form with more modern web look and feel)
• Hacker Test – Editorialized version to explain to the "youngings" what some of this test mean

 Or if you want you can download the original text version below:

The Hacker Test

I wonder how many points I get for having a 15+ year old copy printed on a dot matrix printer?