The Unix Hierarchy of Being

People who come into contact with the Unix system are often told, "If you have trouble, see so-and-so, he's a guru", or "Bob there is a real Unix hacker."
What is a "Unix Wizard"? How does he differ from a "Guru"?
To explore these and other questions, here is a draft of the "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 RETURN after each line of input

Novice

• knows that "ls" will produce a directory
• uses the editor, but calls it "vye"
• has heard of "C" but never used it
• has had a bad experience with rm
• is wondering how to read mail
• is wondering why the person next door seems to like Unix so very much

User

• uses vi and nroff, but inexpertly
• has heard of regular expressions but never seen one
• has figured out that "-" precedes options
• has attempted to write a C program, but decided to stick with Pascal
• is wondering how to move a directory
• thinks that dbx is a brand of stereo component
• knows how to read mail and is wondering how to read the news

Knowledgeable User

• Iuses nroff with no trouble, and is beginning to learn tbl and eqn
• uses grep to search for fixed strings
• 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 but checked the file afterwards
• watched somebody use dbx once
• tried "make" but used spaces instead of tabs

Expert

• uses sed when necessary
• uses macros in vi, uses ex when necessary
• posts news at every possible opportunity
• is still wondering how to successfully reply to mail
• writes csh scripts occasionally
• writes C programs using vi and compiles with make
• has figured out what && and || are for
• uses fgrep because somebody said it was faster

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
• figured out how environment variables are propagated
• writes his own nroff macros to supplement the standard ones
• writes Bourne shell scripts
• installs bug fixes from the net
• uses egrep because he timed it

Guru

• uses m4 and lex with comfort
• writes assembler code with "cat >"
• uses adb on the kernel while the system is loaded
• customizes Unix utilities by patching the source
• reads device driver source with breakfast
• uses "ed" because "ex" is a Berkeleyism
• can answer any Unix question after a little thought
• uses make for anything that requires two or more commands
• has learned how to breach security but no longer needs to try
• is putting James Woods/Henry Spencer egrep into his next Unix release

Wizard

• writes device drivers with "cat >"
• fixes bugs by patching the binaries
• posts his changes to Unix utilities to the net, and they work
• can tell what question you are about to ask, and answers it
• writes his own troff macro packages
• is on a first-name basis with Dennis, Bill, and Ken