I'm sorry to interrupt a coversation .
I 'm Japanese Hacker .

Let me make a proposal
http://akiba.geocities.jp/turbo_duo16/translation-main.html

I hacked SD Gundam X GX GNEXT for 3 years.
These are the resuls of Dialectic Approach.

Screenshots are here.
http://picasaweb.google.com/TurboDuo16/GNEXT?authkey=bEMfoJBZLpk

I would agree with the pep talk/warning about the world of romhacking, but one idea seems foul to me.

You *can't* just go and hack at something until it works; there is a fundamental understanding that needs to take place. I state this knowing that computers were created by mankind and therefore there is a logic behind it. In the early days when people wanted to get to know the guts of an NES and the cartridges, they turned to 6502 ASM books at the library (remember those?) after tearing the helpless machine apart with screwdrivers and multimeters. (citation needed) Here they learned and labored at building there own theories and testing them until they could move on to another level of mental comprehension. It is at this point they got whatever they could out by writing it down in their own books or posting it on the internet. Then came another generation of hackers that read up on this material as well as 6502 ASM and suddenly they were in a position to use their time to advance the science by writing rudimentary utilities and also sharing what they had learned.

Now, here we are with docs and tools and communities and it is suggested that an elitist attitude is acceptable with hard and mostly wasteful work. Did you learn Calculus by discovering it? No, Newton (or the Greeks) did and he took notes. Thank God, now we all can benefit faster and better mathematics in a timely manner.

The same applies to romhacking. I don't care who you are, you won't get far if you don't put in some hard work and learn some low-level stuff, but the use of utilities is essential unless you want to write your own or waste countless hours for the same result. That's OK! Some people DO, but I don't find it as the most intelligent (unless you made improvements) as you are reinventing a toolbox that already exists or even designing a rocket with nothing but sheet metal and hands. For the rest of us, we have work to do.

However, don't get me wrong. I know there are people that want a magic program that will let them copy pictures of feces they found on the internet into Super Mario Bros. with a few clicks of a button and call it "hacking". That's ludicrous and shameful, but it's something that will have to be judged. It would be a harsh judgement, but let me give you another scenario: someone wants to change the text in a game so they learn hexadecimal and download a free hex program to help them do their work more efficiently than hard-coding ASM (if even possible), knowing they could learn more. How would you judge that person? Are they just taking from the labors of others or are they learning and actively hacking?

This post seems to be very judgemental about the difference between "hackers" and "designers" when really, it gives no solid ruling or guidelines as to what role one would have to do in order to be classified as either one. If  the only distinction for a poseur hacker is using a program.. Then I have to strongly consider what future there is in the romhacking world. Personally, I use programs to help my work get done faster while knowing and still utilizing the most advanced techniques in order to completely realize whatever hacking goal I may have.

I cringed when I read this post, but after some reasoning I can understand where you are coming from. I only think that it could be a little less presumptuous and generalizing when referring to requirements of a title such as "hacker."