Artifacts and Customs
The academic hacker subculture is defined by shared work and play focused around central artifacts. Some of these artifacts are very large; the Internet, the World Wide Web, GNU, and the Linux kernel are all hacker creations, works of which the subculture considers itself primary custodian.
The academic hacker subculture has developed a rich range of symbols that serve as recognition symbols and reinforce its group identity. GNU's Gnu; Beastie, the BSD Daemon; Tux, the Linux penguin; and the Perl Camel are some examples. The use of the glider structure from Conway's Game of Life as a general Hacker Emblem has been proposed by Eric S. Raymond.
The academic hacker subculture has an annual ceremonial day—April Fool's. There is a long tradition of perpetrating elaborate jokes, hoaxes, pranks and fake websites on this date, which includes the publication of the annual joke RFC.
Read more about this topic: Hacker (programmer Subculture)
Famous quotes containing the word customs:
“Neighboring farmers and visitors at White Sulphur drove out occasionally to watch ‘those funny Scotchmen’ with amused superiority; when one member imported clubs from Scotland, they were held for three weeks by customs officials who could not believe that any game could be played with ‘such elongated blackjacks or implements of murder.’”
—For the State of West Virginia, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)