Is true hacking dead? What we lost
I don&#x27;t think true hacking is dead, its just lost in a sea of non-hacking.<p>The number of students who could write code in my high school of 2000 was perhaps 35. Those 35 were amazing because they had to work to get access to a computer, so we had already eliminated everyone who was just &quot;oh that&#x27;s too hard&quot;. Of the 35 perhaps a dozen kept at it beyond one class in BASIC.<p>In my daughter&#x27;s similarly sized highschool 400 to 500 of the students had some proficiency in writing code, and perhaps 200 had the motivation to keep at it on a serious level after graduation. Of those, perhaps a dozen were people who I would equate to the &#x27;hackers&#x27; that we had at my high school.<p>This led me to conclude that its a small fraction of the population that has what I think of as the &#x27;compulsive puzzle&#x27; gene. That is they find themselves driven to solve puzzles which they understand must have a solution.<p>There are ways to identify them. If you have the ability to give puzzles, leave some around to be found. Watch for the ones who solve them.<p>In the world where &#x27;everyone is a coder&#x27; though it is super easy to not see them.