Graduated high school a couple years ago. Plenty of people coded, but I had only had one friend that actually was interested in doing more with computers. We found some pretty cool stuff on the school network, and ways to screw with our less tech-savvy friends. It even cost me a trip to the principal's office one time, due to my stupidity and inexperience.
I guess I'm not part of the right forums or boards, but I just haven't been able to find other people with that same kind of passion. I know I could and should just get started by myself, but I'm the type of person that just loses motivation and the will to keep working if I dont have someone else by my side. And I go to a UC. Sure plenty of people know a bit of linux and networking, but how many people actually want to go past their classes and actually take the time to research and learn more? It's hard to find those people. As a result, I'm moving away from hacking into more normal spaces like appdev and web stuff. Its definitely not as exciting, and I dont think I'll ever again feel that thrill of being called to the principal's office for hacking.
> I go to a UC. Sure plenty of people know a bit of linux and networking, but how many people actually want to go past their classes and actually take the time to research and learn more? It's hard to find those people.
Those people do exist, but they’re probably not in a classroom for much longer than it takes to complete the final.
> I dont think I'll ever again feel that thrill of being called to the principal's office for hacking.
Once you become an adult, the "principal's office" is much less interesting place to be.
If you still want to do it, though, there are plenty of opportunities to do so on the "white hat" side of things; look into computer security research, "pen testing", and similar stuff - if you can learn that and have a passion for it, you can make some big bucks doing legit legal hacking.
Of course - everything you learn can be applied to grey and black-hat activities as well (which can be lucrative as well - up to a point of course).
I guess I'm not part of the right forums or boards, but I just haven't been able to find other people with that same kind of passion. I know I could and should just get started by myself, but I'm the type of person that just loses motivation and the will to keep working if I dont have someone else by my side. And I go to a UC. Sure plenty of people know a bit of linux and networking, but how many people actually want to go past their classes and actually take the time to research and learn more? It's hard to find those people. As a result, I'm moving away from hacking into more normal spaces like appdev and web stuff. Its definitely not as exciting, and I dont think I'll ever again feel that thrill of being called to the principal's office for hacking.