{"id":1736,"date":"2010-02-18T21:37:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T02:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1736"},"modified":"2014-03-22T07:15:42","modified_gmt":"2014-03-22T11:15:42","slug":"how-you-know-youve-made-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1736","title":{"rendered":"How you know you&#8217;ve made a difference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I received this a few seconds ago in my mailbox.  It&#8217;s not especially unusual for me to get wow-you-changed-my-life email, I see two or three in a typical month, but this one is&#8230;well, I&#8217;ll say a bit more <em>intense<\/em> than usual. Also, 34 is an unusual age; they tend to be teenagers. Sender&#8217;s name masked and one bit turned into a live link.  Otherwise unedited, typos and all. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nI just finished reading your [<a href=\"http:\/\/catb.org\/~esr\/faqs\/hacker-howto.html\">Hacker HOWTO<\/a>] for the second time in as many<br \/>\ndays.  All of my life I have wanted to be a programmer.  I have never<br \/>\ndone it.  I dealt with the failure of that by downloading cracked<br \/>\nsoftware and telling myself that I was a &#8220;hacker.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When I clicked on the link to your guide, my intention was to get<br \/>\nstarted on the road towards what I envisioned a hacker to be.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of your guide, I was wallowing in humiliation.  I felt&#8230;<br \/>\nwell basically I felt like a jack ass.  I never even knew what a<br \/>\nhacker was.  I wasn&#8217;t even a cracker, just some poser with no<br \/>\nambition.<\/p>\n<p>Your guide showed me that any of my few contributions to the cracker<br \/>\ncommunity were meaningless, juvenile  ploys for attention with no<br \/>\nprogressive merit.  They won&#8217;t matter in 6 months because I haven&#8217;t<br \/>\n&#8216;built&#8217; anything.<\/p>\n<p>After reading your guide, I began to research and really appreciate<br \/>\nthe open source community.  I saw that the degree of separation<br \/>\nbetween us wasn&#8217;t to huge of a gap and I realized that I could,<br \/>\nthrough dedication and hard(but fun) work, be part of something that<br \/>\nis growing and giving.  A place where individual contributions aren&#8217;t<br \/>\nlost in the grand scheme of things, but help shape that scheme.<\/p>\n<p>I am 34 years old and I have no problem admitting to you that your<br \/>\nguide made me feel like a complete ass.  It also directed me to an<br \/>\nideal I will be proud to contribute to.<\/p>\n<p>For that, I thank you Sir.<\/p>\n<p>XXXXX XXXXXX\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I replied by quoting &#8220;I saw that the degree of separation between us wasn&#8217;t to huge of a gap&#8221; and said &#8220;I&#8217;m glad you got that far.  Good luck on your journey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you know your life has made a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I received this a few seconds ago in my mailbox. It&#8217;s not especially unusual for me to get wow-you-changed-my-life email, I see two or three in a typical month, but this one is&#8230;well, I&#8217;ll say a bit more intense than usual. Also, 34 is an unusual age; they tend to be teenagers. Sender&#8217;s name masked&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1736\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How you know you&#8217;ve made a difference<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,28],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hacker-culture","category-mr-famous-guy","tag-esr","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5626,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/5626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}