Is true hacking dead? What we lost
I don't think true hacking is dead, its just lost in a sea of non-hacking.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.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.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.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.In the world where 'everyone is a coder' though it is super easy to not see them.