Related:

• Real software engineers like writing their own compilers, preferably in PROLOG (they also like writing them in unimplemented languages, but it turns out to be difficult to actually RUN these).
• Real software engineers write in languages that have not actually been implemented for any machine, and for which only the formal spec (in BNF) is available.
  This keeps them from having to take any machine dependencies into account....
• Real software engineers don't write applications programs, they implement algorithms.
  If someone has an application that the algorithm might help with, that's nice....
• Real Programmers don't read the "Wall Street Journal"; they read dumps.
• If it doesn't have recursive function calls, Real Software Engineers don't program in it.
• Real software engineers don't program in assembler. They become queasy at the very thought.
• Booksellers never read scrolls; it might carry them too far away.
• Politics: Vaguely left of center, except for the strong libertarian contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely.
  The only safe generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritaria...