[NumberFiveAlive]

Is it just me, or does this guy have his definitions swapped. That, or I've been wrong this whole time: I've always thought of hackers as more freewheeling, possibly with less formal training (or possibly not) who like to play with new technologies and learn by getting their hand dirty.

And I've thought of coders as closer to the traditional definition of 'software engineer'. More formalized education (or possibly not), more formal approach to the process of writing code (planning meetings, standards and practices, etc).

I'm not saying either one is better (both have a lot they bring to the table, and few people are all one or the other, we're usually somewhere on a sliding scale between the two).

[j_baker]

It sounds to me that he may be thinking more in terms of the difference between say an accountant and a bookkeeper. In other words, a hacker is someone who looks at the high level big picture while a coder is someone who just dives in the code and makes changes (possibly under the direction of a hacker).

[arctangent]

I agree with your assessment.

I've always thought that a "hacker" operates at a higher level of abstraction and/or with a broader base of knowledge to draw upon (especially from unrelated fields) than does a mere "doer".

I think there's a need for both types of people in any large team, so one type isn't necessarily better than another in all circumstances.

However, in a small team (or startup) I think hackers are much more valuable due to their generalist nature. You can always hire code monkeys later to patch edge-case bugs and polish things up :-)

Disclaimer: I'm a hacker, so maybe I'm biased...