I can see various types of posts in the community. I'm curious, what is the main demographic of the readers here? Are they software engineers, hardware engineers, or others?
Unironically. More generally: nerds that like to solve problems. Most of us happen to be programmers, but I've seen plenty of people in the comments saying that they don't even work adjacent to the programming industry, yet they're here. That's what makes HN great. Diverse demographic.
I wish. Mostly the HN audience seems to be corporate IT workers and coders who have only superficial interest in hacking and deep understanding of computers. At best they're hacker groupies who ooh and aah over interesting articles but haven't done any side projects or hacks of their own.
I think it depends on what you mean by "hackers". In the traditional definition, there are a good number here, but they are far from the majority and aren't really the demographic that HN courts.