Hacker Purity Test (1989)
Overview of the Hacker Purity Test (1989)
- Seen mostly as a historical artifact rather than a serious metric of “hackerness.”
- Originates as a parody of earlier “Purity Tests” (social/sexual questionnaires), replacing wild acts with ultra-nerdy activities.
- Many entries are in-jokes; intended for humor and self-mockery, not formal gatekeeping.
Generational Gap and Relevance Today
- Several commenters note that anyone born after the late 70s or early 80s will score “unfairly” low because the hardware, OSes, and practices referenced were already obsolete by the time they started.
- Some frame it as ideal for people who were in university or industry around the late 70s–80s, not for later generations.
- Multiple people suggest an updated test covering 90s–2000s hacker milestones (Linux distros, device drivers, modem and cable hacks, stack smashing, etc.).
Hacker Culture: Nostalgia vs Critique
- Some express nostalgia for old hacker culture: irreverence, deep technical tinkering, elaborate in-jokes (e.g., BOFH, Geek Code).
- Others are turned off by the status games and “chest beating” over obscure knowledge; recall real people who took this attitude seriously.
- Debate over whether hacker culture has “died” or just changed shape into more corporate, regulated, and social-media-driven forms.
Specific Questions and Anecdotes
- People reminisce about: toggling in boot code on front panels, punch cards and lace cards, IPLing mainframes from tape, writing viruses, self-modifying code, telephony “blue box” style tone generation, and obscure hardware hacks.
- Several mention delight at personality and lifestyle questions that now seem mainstream: using a computer more than 8 hours straight, logging in before breakfast, online blind dates, terabytes of storage.
- Some hardware and low-level anecdotes highlight ongoing relevance of certain “ancient” skills (e.g., NMIs, manual bootstrapping, physical hacks to fix timing).
Tools, Mirrors, and Related Artifacts
- The original scoring form is partially broken; working versions exist via archive links, Debian’s
purity/purity-offpackages, and a GitHub mirror. - Thread also recalls “Geek Code” signatures and other 90s net-culture questionnaires as similar cultural artifacts.