What is a Unix Guru

People who come into contact with the UNIX system are often told: "If you have trouble, se so-and-so, he's a guru", or "Bob there is a real hacker." Often, they are baffled by these appelations, and do not pursue the matter further. What is a "UNIX Hacker?" How does he differ from a "guru"? To answer these and other questions, I present a draft of the "UNIX HIERARCHY"

beginner:

insecure with the concept of a terminal
has yet to learn the basics of 'vi'
has not figured out how to get a directory
still has trouble with typing after each line of input

novice:

knows that 'ls' will produce a directoy
uses the editor, but calls it 'vye'
has heard of 'C' but never used it
has had his first bad experience with 'rm'
is wondering how to read his 'mail'
is wondering why the person next to him seems to like UNIX so very much

user:

uses 'vi' and 'nroff', but inexpertly
has heard of regular-expr's but never seen one
uses egrep to search for fixed strings
has figured out that '-' precedes options
is wondering how to move a directory
has attempted to write a 'C' program and has decided to stick with pascal
thinks that 'dbx' is a brand of stereo component
knows how to read is 'mail' and is wondering how to read the 'news'

knowlegable user:

uses 'nroff' with no trouble, and is beginning to learn 'tbl' and 'eqn'
thinks that 'fgrep' is "fast grep"
has figured out that 'mv(1)' will move directories
has learned that 'learn' doesn't help
somebody has shown him how to write 'C' programs
once used 'sed' to do some text substitution
has seen 'sdb' used but does not use it himself
thinks that 'make' is only for wimps

expert:

uses 'sed' when necessary
uses macro's in 'vi', uses 'ex' when necessary
posts news at every possible opportunity
write 'csh' scripts occasionally
writes 'C' programs using 'vi' and compiles with 'cc'
has figured out what '&&' and '||' are for
thinks that human history started with '!h'

hacker:

uses 'sed' and 'awk' with comfort
uses undocumented features of 'vi'
writes 'C' code with 'cat >' and compiles with '!cc'
uses 'adb' because he doesn't trust source debuggers
can answer questions about the user environment
writes his own 'nroff' macros to supplement standard ones
writes scripts for Bourne shell (/bin/sh)

guru:

uses 'm4' and 'lex' with comfort
writes assembly code with 'cat >'
uses 'adb' on the kernel while the system is loaded
customizes utilites by patching the source
reads device driver source with his breakfast
can answer any UNIX question after a little thought
uses 'make' for anything that requires two or more distinct commands to achieve
has learned how to breach security, but no longer needs to try

wizard:

writes device drivers with 'cat >'
fixes bugs by patching the binaries
can answer any question before you ask
writes his own troff macro packages
is on a first-name basis with Dennis, Bill, and Ken

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