I'm pretty sure the difference is, by definition, whether they're just using tools other people built or they actually understand things and can do it themselves. The script kiddie can be incredibly dangerous if the tool they grabbed off the shelf works.

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mohsen1 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you think any programmer really understands how their program works end-to-end? At some abstraction layer, we're all clueless. There are many layers between what you type into the text editor and the actual CPU ticks that make your program work. I bet nobody fully understands the whole stack.

Now that that text editor accepts English, we're all calling each other names, etc.

	▲	NorwegianDude an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		While most don't, there are developers who actually do understand systems from end to end. Most developers are terrible developers, compared to the really good ones.
	▲	yjftsjthsd-h an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I didn't say that Real Hackers™ understood every single thing perfectly from editor to electrons. You've made up a strawman and then beaten it.
	▲	fragmede an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Used to be, knowing a ret from a nop (90) meant something. If you can just load up a model and say "hack teh NSA.gov" while not actually knowing anything about even DNS, what are we even doing?