Lamer test
A humour test that tells you who you are with computers: a dummy, a lamer, a user, a hacker, a programmer or a gamer. Every answer adds points to each of the six types, and the types closest to the top score win. First as a DOS program in December 2000, then in 2003 as a website in PHP and MySQL with registration by nickname and statistics of answers.
Programs
Tester 2000
The DOS version: 15 questions such as “What do you do when the computer hangs?”, “Your reaction to the word Microsoft” or “How much is 5+5=10?” (one of the answers is “Invalid numeric format”). The questions and the weights live in a plain text file, IN.TXT: six numbers per answer, one for each type. At the end the program prints every type within 80% of the top score and appends the result to RES.TXT, so a whole class could be compared. “You are a Programmer! The test is in IN.TXT. You can study and edit it.” Below is the start of IN.TXT.
1. Что вы делаете при зависании компьютера?
7
1 -1 1 2 1 0 Alt+Ctrl+Del
2 1 1 -1 -1 0 Зову кого нибудь на помощь
-1 0 1 2 2 0 Reset
...
Чайник Ламер Юзер Хакер Программер Геймер Lamer test on the web 2003
The same test as a website: 20 questions, registration by nickname, every answer saved to MySQL so you could go back and continue, results stored per attempt, and an admin page with statistics of which answers people chose. “Becoming a hacker is harder now (a different scoring system). Scoring 100% is hard anyway.”