I wished I was a hacker when I was young and naiver. Then, during high school, I tried (badly) to understand computer networks and operating systems using the cute Kurumin Linux and to learn how to program in C (which was mostly solving quadratic equations and printing messages to the console. What a wondrous hacker, huh?!?). Now I am an electrical engineer so I can hack not only code, but also voltages, currents, and impedances :-P
Although I am a specialist in digital ASIC design, this was not enough for me to work in the semiconductor industry: life is not that straightforward. Now I work for a telco helping to keep its services available so that people can talk to each other whenever they want (even though if they sometimes do so to fight).
In order to not forget what I have learnt, I goof around with (System)Verilog, HLSs (such as SystemC, ArchC, Bluespec, MyHDL, Chisel), and more recently with RISC-V during some of my scarce spare time.