Non-CS/EE hackers?
jacquesm: How about those that don't have degrees in anything?Computer programmers (good ones and bad ones) come to programming from all walks of life.My personal collection of 'interesting' prior subjects are:  - a dentist

  - a psychologist

  - a biologist

  - a banker (and pretty high up the ladder too)

All of them caught the bug when frustrated with the programs they had at their disposal. Some started with excel (or even 1-2-3) and worked their way to the limitations of spreadsheet models, and decided to take the plunge, others started fixing some small problem in a program they had access to and took it from there.It's really interesting to see how many people were not in to computers in their schooldays that got sucked in to it.The start-up bug and 'hacking' are two different things though, not necessarily related.All of the examples above used their domain knowledge in the different field extensively and have made out very well because of that. (especially the dentist, that guy really impresses me, every year he has pretty much all the dentists in the country send him a check).