Is true hacking dead? What we lost
I don'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 "oh that's too hard". Of the 35 perhaps a dozen kept at it beyond one class in BASIC.<p>In my daughter'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 'hackers' 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 'compulsive puzzle' 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 'everyone is a coder' though it is super easy to not see them.