In an industry dominated by metrics, monetisation, and mind-numbing meetings, it’s easy to forget why many of us got into tech in the first place. We didn’t start coding for quarterly KPIs. We weren’t driven by the number of GitHub stars. Most of us began because it was fun — because there was joy in making something out of nothing, joy in understanding how systems work, joy in the hack.
But somewhere along the way, we started optimising for careers, side hustles, personal branding, and clickbait. And that’s fine — but it’s not the whole story.
Outside of work, I’ve had a lot of fun building things with no deadline, no roadmap, and no users. That kind of exploration not only keeps me curious — it’s also sharpened my skills in ways I bring back to my professional work.
This post is a small manifesto: a call to reclaim the hacker ethos — the mindset that values curiosity, exploration, and building cool shit just because you can.
What Is the Hacker Ethos, Really? Link to heading
The hacker ethos isn’t about breaking into systems. It’s about breaking open systems. It’s about curiosity-driven development. It’s about seeing a black box and thinking, “I want to know how that works — better yet, I want to build my own.”
At its heart, hacking is:
- Playful – not necessarily efficient, but always engaging.
- Exploratory – more questions than answers.
- Independent – unconcerned with gatekeepers.
- Creative – it’s not just science; it’s also art.
It’s the teenager building a game engine in their basement. The sysadmin writing a shell script that only they understand. The indie developer who spends two months on pixel-perfect retro UI just for the aesthetic of it.
How We Lost the Joy Link to heading
The modern tech world is obsessed with utility and scale:
"Is this project viable?"
"Can it be monetised?"
"Is it built in a popular stack?"
"Will it rank on Hacker News?"
This mindset turns everything into a means to an end — a portfolio piece, a startup MVP, a stepping stone to FAANG. Hacking becomes product development. Joy becomes obligation.
And when you’re constantly producing for others — users, employers, the algorithm — it’s easy to burn out. The hacker inside you goes quiet.
Building for the Joy of It Link to heading
Let’s flip that script. Let’s make things for no reason other than because they’re cool.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Write a game engine. Not because the world needs another, but because it teaches you graphics, input, memory management, and game loops.
- Build an emulator. Because it’s the deepest crash course in how computers actually work.
- Design your own programming language. Even a toy one. It forces you to think about syntax, parsing, type systems, and more.
- Clone a tool you love. Not to replace it — just to see if you can. Write your own
grep,top, or even a window manager. - Make a useless website. Something weird and delightful. Like a typewriter simulator or a virtual lava lamp.
- Contribute to weird open source. Not just the “useful” stuff. Explore the repos with strange README files and no roadmap.
It’s Not About “Finishing” Link to heading
Hacking isn’t about shipping or scaling. You don’t need a roadmap, a logo, a launch plan, or 1,000 users. You just need a spark of curiosity and the will to follow it.
Some of my most satisfying projects never saw the light of day. They lived and died in ~/projects/unfinished/, and that’s fine. They made me better. They made me happy.
Make It Yours Again Link to heading
Take back your weekends. Unplug from the hustle content. Stop doomscrolling the latest frameworks and just… start building something weird. Something that doesn’t matter. Something for you.
You don’t need permission. You don’t need a plan. You just need that feeling — the one that made you want to learn how computers work in the first place.
Let that hacker out again.
