Unix Users Hierarchy

People who come into contact with the UNIX system are often told : « If you have trouble, see so-and-so, he’s a guru », or « Bob there is a real Unix hacker ». Often they are baffled by these appellations, and do not pursue the matter further. What is a « Unix Hacker ? ». How does he differ from a « guru » ? To answer these and other questions, here is the UNIX HIERARCHY :

beginner

• insecure with the concept of a terminal
• has yet to learn the basics of vi
• has not figured out how to get a directory
• still has trouble with typing after each line of input

novice

• knows that ls will produce a directory
• use the editor, but calls it vye.
• has heard of C but never used it
• has had his first bad experience with rm
• is wondering how to read his mail
• is wondering why the person next to him seems to like Unix so very much

user

• uses vi and nroff, but inexpertly
• had heard of regular-expr’s but never seen one
• uses egrep to search for fixed strings
• has figured out that ’-’ precedes options
• is wondering how to move a directory
• has attempted to write C program and has decided to stick with pascal
• thinks that sdb is a brand of stereo component
• knows how to read his mail and is wondering how to read the news

knowledgeable user

• uses nroff with no trouble, and is beginning to learn tbl and eqn
• thinks that fgrep is fast grep
• has figured out that mv will move directories
• has learned that learn doesn’t help
• somebody has shown him how to write C programs
• once used sed to do some text substitution
• has seen sdb used but does not use it himself
• thinks that make is only for wimps

expert

• uses sed when necessary
• uses macro’s in vi, uses ex when necessary
• posts news at every possible opportunity
• writes csh scripts occasionally
• writes C programs using vi and compiles with cc
• has figured out what && and || are for
• thinks that human history started with !h

hacker

• uses sed and awk with comfort
• uses undocumented features of vi
• writes C code with cat > and compiles with !cc
• uses adb because he doesn’t trust source debuggers
• can answer questions about the user environment
• writes his own ’nroff’ macros to supplement standard ones
• writes scripts for Bourne shell (/bin/sh)

guru

• uses m4 and lex with comfort
• writes assembly code with cat >
• uses adb on the kernel while system is loaded
• customizes utilities by patching the source
• reads device driver source with his breakfast
• can answer any Unix question after a little thought
• uses make for anything that requires two or more distinct commands to archive
• has learned how to breach security, but no longer needs to try

wizard

• writes device drivers with cat >
• fixes bugs by patching the binaries
• can answer any question before ask
• writes his own troff macro packages
• is on first-name basis with Dennis, Bill and Ken