I'm a self-taught 19-year-old programmer. Coding since 10, dropped out of high-school and got fist job at 15.

In the the early days I was extremely passionate, learning SICP, Algorithms, doing Haskell, C/C++, Rust, Assembly, writing toy compilers/interpreters, tweaking Gentoo/Arch. Even got a lambda tattoo on my arm after learning lambda-calculus and church numerals.

My first job - a company which raised $100,000 on kickstarter. The CEO was a dumb millionaire hippie, who was bored with his money, so he wanted to run a company even though he had no idea what he was doing. He used to talk about how he build our product, even tho he had 0 technical knowledge whatsoever. He was on news a few times which was pretty cringeworthy. The company had only 1 programmer (other than me) who was pretty decent.

We shipped the project, but soon we burned through kickstart money and the sales dried off. Instead of trying to aquire customers (or abandoning the project), boss kept looking for investors, which kept us afloat for an extra year.

Eventually the money dried up, and instead of closing gates, boss decreased our paychecks without our knowledge. He also converted us from full-time employees to "contractors" (also without our knowledge) so he wouldn't have to pay taxes for us. My paycheck decreased by 40% by I still stayed.

One day, I was trying to burn a USB drive, and I did "dd of=/dev/sda" instead of sdb, therefore wiping out our development server. They asked me to stay at company, but I turned in my resignation letter the next day (my highest ever post on reddit was in /r/TIFU).

Next, I found a job at a "finance" company. $50k/year as a 18-year-old. CEO was a good-looking smooth-talker who made few million bucks talking old people into giving him their retirement money.

He claimed he changed his ways, and was now trying to help average folks save money. So far I've been here 8 month and I do not see that happening. He forces me to do sketchy shit, that clearly doesn't have clients best interests in mind.

I am the only developer, and I quickly became a back-end and front-end ninja. 

I switched the company infrastructure from shitty drag+drop website builder, WordPress and shitty Excel macros into a beautiful custom-written python back-end.

Little did I know, this company doesn't need a real programmer. I don't have clear requirements, I get unrealistic deadlines, and boss is too busy to even communicate what he wants from me.

Eventually I sold my soul. I switched parts of it to WordPress, because I was not given enough time to write custom code properly.

For latest project, I switched from using custom React/Material/Sass to using drag+drop TypeForms for surveys.

I used to be an extremist FLOSS Richard Stallman fanboy, but eventually I traded my morals, dreams and ideals for a paycheck. Hey, $50k is not bad, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining? :(

I got addicted to pot for 2 years. Recently I've gotten arrested, and it is honestly one of the best things that ever happened to me. Before I got arrested, I did some freelancing for a mugshot website. In un-related news, my mugshot dissapeared.

I have been sober for 2 month now, and my brain is finally coming back. 

I know average developer hits a wall at around $80k, and then you have to either move into management or have your own business.

After getting sober, I realized that money isn't going to make me happy, and I don't want to manage people. I'm an old-school neck-beard hacker. My true passion is mathematics and physics. I don't want to glue bullshit libraries together. 

I want to write real code, trace kernel bugs, optimize compilers. Albeit, I was boring in the wrong generation.

I've started studying real analysis, brushing up differential equations, and now trying to tackle machine learning and Neural Networks, and understanding the juicy math behind gradient descent.

I don't know what my plan is for the future, but I'll figure it out as long as I have my brain. Maybe I will continue making shitty forms and collect paycheck, while studying mathematics. Maybe I will figure out something else.

But I can't just let my brain rot while chasing money and impressing dumb bosses. If I wait until I get rich to do things I love, my brain will be too far gone at that point. I can't just sell myself out. I'm coming back to my roots.

I still feel like after experiencing industry and pot, I'm a shittier developer than I was at age 15. But my passion is slowly coming back.

Any suggestions from wise ol' neckbeards on how to proceed?

My words to live by...

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Mentor+++

I now feel like a hacker.
Double tap a comment or rant to upvote.
But when you already upvoted, rants will open but comments will do nothing.
Just found out, am I just the one who didn't knew this? Tell me in the comments below!

One Thursday noon,
operation manager: (looking at mobile)what the.....something is wrong i am getting bunch of emails about orders getting confirmed.
Colleague dev: (checks the main email where it gets all email sent/received) holy shit all of our clients getting confirmation email for orders which were already cancelled/incomplete.
Me: imediately contacting bluehost support, asking them to down the server so just that we can stopp it, 600+ emails were already sent and people keep getting it.
*calls head of IT* telling the situation because he's not in the office atm.

CEO: wtf is happening with my business, is it a hacker?

*so we have a intrusion somebody messed the site with a script or something*

All of us(dev) sits on the code finding the vulnerabilities , trying to track the issue that how somebody was able to do that.

*After an hour*

So we have gone through almost easch function written in the code which could possibly cause that but unable to find anything which could break it.

Head asking op when did you started getting it actually?
Op: right after 12 pm.

*an other hour passes*

Head: (checking the logs) so right after the last commit, site got updated too?. And....and.....wtf what da hell who wrote this shit in last commit?
* this fuckin query is missing damn where clause* 🤬

Me: me 😰

*long pause, everyone looking at me and i couldn't look at anyone*
The shame and me that how can i do that.

Head: so its you not any intrudor 😡
Further investigating, what the holy mother of #_/&;=568 why cronjob doesn't check how old the order is. Why why why.

(So basically this happened, because of that query all cancelled/incomplete orders got updated damage done already, helping it the cronjob running on all of them sending clients email and with that function some other values got updated too, inshort the whole db is fucked up.)
and now they know who did it as well.

*Head after some time cooling down, asked me the solution for the mess i create*

Me: i took backup just couple of days before i can restore that with a script and can do manual stuff for the recent 2 days. ( operation manager was already calling people and apologising from our side )

Head: okay do it now.

Me: *in panic* wrote a script to restore the records ( checking what i wrote 100000000 times now ), ran...tested...all working...restored the data.
after that wrote an apology email, because of me staff had to work alot and it becomes so hectic just because of me.

* at the end of the day CEO, head, staff accepted apology and asked me to be careful next time, so it actually teached me a lesson and i always always try to be more careful now especially with quries. People are really good here so that's how it goes* 🙂

So after my phone got stolen I am now using a series30 Nokia device, problem was synching contacts dumped from Google contacts. Run a Python script that modified the vcf into a format compatible with the series 30, never felt more of a hacker man than this

This rant goes to my best friend.

Fuck you!

You do not fucking argue with people for doing what they like! So what if I want to use linux? What fucking problem does that make? Am I now a hacker fanboy for wanting to use a terminal instead of fucking pointing and clicking on shit like a monkey? Am I not allowed to want my privacy and free open-source? What? I shouldn't browse internet without getting my personal info stolen? Oh, they're tracking criminals? Then why don't you install a camera in your fucking living room so you can help them out? And don't fucking get me started on why I don't want to use Windows 10.

Fuck fucking fuck fuck. I know he's a good friend but this fucking shit gets my blood boiling.

I have Kali Linux now, so bow down bitches.

Hey guys, you won't believe what happaned to me, I left my laptop open in a hacker coffee shop and went to take a piss, and when I returned I fou d out that someone stole all my crypto CockRingCoin 😭😭 I lost a million and a half Shekels but then remembered my brother has a cousin who knows a lawyer who's wife is a friend with a wolf who knows a real matrix hacker who can hack CIA using only his toes, I contacted him and you wouldn't believe it but he got all of my cock coins back to me, I don't know what I would've done without him. If anybody needs help recovering crypto I can more than reccomend my dear holy saviour LeHackerCockSucker
WhatsApp: +972-50-EATMYASS-0
Email: ciahacker@cock.gov

But then as I was happily looking at my crypto returned I notice a few payments I don't rwmember making, turns out, my wife was cheating on me! And using my crypto to buy her lover stuff!
So I contacted the afformentioned lawyer who's a friend of the cousin that my brother has, and he helped me file for divorce and punish my cheating wife, for anybody needing a marriage lawyer:
WhatsApp: +972-54-DeliciousPussy-6
Email: eatmypussy@lawyers.porn

I am now happily married with the wolf who's the friend of the lawyer's wife and he fucks me in the ass every night. If you want a good life like mine you know who to call.

So, basically what happened today was:
A classmate asked me if I could hack him some money in online games. Later on he saw me using an FTP Client and saied: "Whoa, if I was as good as you I would totally use my skills to hack something!!!"

Yea... no.

(Writing this I turned of aurocorrect cause it's pissing me of when writing english)

this just happened a few seconds ago and I am just laughing at the pathetic site that is Facebook. xD
4 years ago:
So I was quite a noobie gamer/hacker(sort of) back then and i had a habit of having multiple gmail/fb accounts, just for gaming, like accounts through which i can log in all at once in the same poker room, so 4/5 players in the game are me, or just some multiple accounts for clash of clans for donations.
I had 7-8 accounts back then. one had a name that translated to "may the dead remain in peace "@yahoomail.com . it was linked to fb using same initials. after sometime only this and 2 of my main accs were all i cared about.even today when i feel like playing, i sometimes use those accs.

2 years ago.
My dad is a simple man and was quite naive to modern techs and used to hang around with physical button nokia phones.But we had a business change, my father was now in a partnership in a restaurant where his daily work included a lot of sitting job and and casual working. So he bought a smartphone for some time pass.
He now wanted to download apps and me to teach him.I tried a lot to get him his own acc, but he couldn't remember his login credentials.
so at the end i added one of my own fake ID's(maythedead...) so he could install from playstore, watch vids on youtube and whatever.

The Actual Adventure starts now
Today, 1 hour ago:
I had completely forgot about this incident, since my parents are now quite modern in terms of tech.
But today out of nowhere i recieved an email that someone has JUST CHAINGED MY FB PASSWORD FOR ONE OF MY FAKE ACCS!?!??
what the hell, i know it was just a useless acc and i never even check my fb from any acc these days, but if someone could login into that acc, its not very difficult to track my main accs, id's, etc so i immediately opened this fb security portal and that's where the stupidity starts:

1)To recover your account they FUCKIN ASKS FOR A PHYSICAL ID. yeah, no email, no security question you have to scan your driving license or passport to get back to your account.And where would I get a license for some person named "may the dead remain in peace"? i simply went back.
2) tried another hack that i thought that will work.Closed fb help page, opened fb again , tried to login with my old credentials, it says" old password has been changed,please enter new password", i click forget password and they send an otp. i thought yes i won, because the number and recover mail id was mine only so i received it.
when i added the otp, i was first sent to a password change page (woohoo, i really won! :)) but then it sends me again to the same fuckin physical id verification page.FFFFFFFFFuck

3)I was sad and terrified that i got hacked.But 10 mins later a mail comes ,"Your Facebook password was reset using the email address on Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 8:24pm (UTC+05:30)."
I tried clicking the links attached, hoping that the password i changed(point<2>) has actually done something to account.NADA, the account still needs a physical license to open:/

4) lost, i just login to my main account and lookup for my lost fake account. the fun part:my account has the display pic of my father?!!?!
So apparently, my father wanted to try facebook, he used the fake account i gave him to create one, fb showed him that this id already has an fb account attached to it and he accidently changed my password.MY FATHER WAS THE HACKER THE WHOLE TIME xD.
but response from fb?" well sir, if you want your virtually shitty account back , you first will have to provide us with all details of your bank transactions or your voter id card, maybe trump will like it"

Wtf. So if I say I'm a web developer and I say I'm from Russia. Then I am automatically a hacker for you? "Web developer + Russian = 95% chance of being a hacker". Yeah, right. Since now, right after I say I'm from Russia I always add this: "No, I'm not a hacker and no, I didn't hack the last election, but I can tell you your last four digits of your SSN if you show me your debit card". Guess what, no one wants to talk to me anymore.

So I'm trying to get used to using vim and I've spent a couple of days setting up my vimrc and practising commands and what not.

Come today I'm doing my first proper coding session and my codes sending back weird errors and I can't work out why

Then when I read very carefully I find :w somewhere it's not supposed to be... Of course I'd forgetten to enter normal mode a ton of times and now my code is littered with :wq and :w so I spent a few minutes combing my code to find them all and it all works now.

Am I an elite hacker now?

i have been applying for jobs recently, and after getting some HR interviews that evolved to tech interviews, i just cancelled them all...

Every company seems to have hacker rank, and online coding sessions as tech interview stages which really stress me out. Its like everyone thinks they are google and its ok to make people go theough this pressure to join them.

I dont mind being given 10 days to implement a complex project, after which im either in or not. But 20 mins to solve something online while either the interviewer is watching me or the automated test is waiting to filter my application out... i get anxiety just thinking about that..

so im gonna stick with my current job for now, and focus on building my own business slowly on the side. I really felt anxious because of those tech interviews these past weeks and i feel so much better after cancelling all of them.

if a decent company comes along with the project approach, id love to apply, but otherwise ill just stick to where I am for now. dont know if im being immature or irresponsible career wise or if this decision will blow up in my face

stay tune to find out !

These days i like to think of our data privacy as that of an amazon package delivery between person A to B

- Person A wants a packet of condoms and guns, but don't want society to know about it
- person B wants to send guns and condoms to B
- Amazon is willing to provide transportation with a pinky promise that it won't tell anyone about the delivery.
- Thus B gives the condoms and guns to Amazon wrapped up in hard box hoping that Amazon or anybody else won't open it. Similarly A receives the packet hoping that nobody else got to know about it.

But the problem is a LOT of people could possibly know of the contents, even if A or B aren't willing to share details
- Amazon can look into it.
- government can stop the amazon car transporting the packet and force them to look into it.
- some 3rd person(aka hacker) could fool the delivery truck and get access to packet contents.

=======================================
and this morning, my neighbour, A very radical hindu supporter, frustrated by the recent tablighi jamaat fuck-up , gave a very strange statement "you know in future, the government would pass a law which will allow them to hear these ppl's calls /whatsapp messages. This will allow government to detect and take actions on every of these anti-national scums"

I wanted to say WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU HOPING FOR, BOOMER? THAT'S CENSORSHIP!! but i couldn't say because his illiterate vision is no longer a hope, i can see it becoming reality.

Personally i am equally angry with that whole incident and how that community handled it. But how can anyone ask for censorship, just because a few elements misused it? The problem lies with thise elements and people who support their thoughts not the whole community or the communication medium.

From what i have heard in the recent US and indian law news, they are essentially trying to peek into the data we send to each other legally.

So going by the package delivery analogy, its like government now wants to have every amazon delivery happen in transparent boxes in a transparent truck, just because a few people ordered illegal items via amazon delivery.

This world is going crazy and stupid.

Used a keylogger to get my cousin's facebook password.

Now that 12 year old kid thinks that I am a badass hacker secretly working for the NSA😎.

I used LDAP to get public facing employee details of my company.
Now my colleagues think that I am an hacker 😂

Since i was little i always wanted to amaze my friends with something. Back then it was magic, then it was music and now it's programming. Please don't kill me but i remember looking at hackers and stuff and seeing how they could remotely control other people's computers and i just wanted to learn that so i looked it up on google and found a post somewhere saying that if you're a hacker and don't even know basic html then you're not a hacker so i decided to learn html. Not so long has passed and i still want to be a developer so i am trying to learn javascript and then start moving to heavier languages. No one i know codes and i'm really alone so if i can simply make something cool with javascript they will be amazed, in the end that's all i want.

How do I prepare for a tech interview at top companies one year from now?
I'll be pursuing master's in CS from this august and want to prepare myself accordingly. I have a decent understanding of algorithms and data structure. Although I can solve problems at my work easily, I am still worried about my inability to solve medium - difficult hacker rank problems.