What Is a Vandal?
The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term vandal, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a vandal, though, only two are really relevant. There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term vandal. Vandals built the Internet. Vandals made the Unix operating system what it is today. Vandals run Usenet. Vandals make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a vandal, you’re a vandal. The vandal mind-set is not confined to this software-vandal culture. There are people who apply the vandal attitude to other things, like electronics or music actually, you can find it at the highest
