[davidw]

Yay, everyone's a hacker!

Except, they aren't. Writers may be clever people and smart, entertaining, and so on, but there are plenty of them that aren't really hackers by any definition that isn't so broad as to be completely meaningless.

[bluefish]

Have to agree. In general, as much as I like most of these alt stories that have been posted to HN lately, I came to HN to escape this sort of posting. I'm sure we could expand the term 'hacker' to apply to anyone who was a creative misfit in their field; ingenious doctors, writers ahead of their time, one-handed clock makers, etc but that's not what I consider a hacker in the context of this community. Still, would love the alternative with links like this as a companion site to HN.

[10ren]

I'm not commenting on this specific article, but, to me, the definition of a "hacker" has always been someone who "tinkers", as opposed to a design springing fully formed from the head of Zeus. By this definition, Edison was a hacker, and Tesla was not. Linus is a hacker, but Dijkstra was not. I don't know enough architects to say who was a hacker in that field (maybe Christopher Alexander?), but Frank Lloyd Wright was not (he designed fallingwater in the time it took his client to travel to meet with him, after meditating ahem on it for months).

By this definition, for writers, a hacker is someone who fiddles with their writing - as in this morning, I removed a comma from my novel. This afternoon I put it back in.

I don't claim it's the definition of hacking, but I think there's some merit in its perspective.

[jacquesm]

> but Frank Lloyd Wright was not (he designed fallingwater in the time it took his client to travel to meet with him, after meditating ahem on it for months).

Isn't putting stuff off to the very last moment the hall mark of the true hacker ?

[unalone]

Woody Allen is a hacker. Look at his innovations in cinema - Annie Hall was dated by the time I finally saw it but still pulled some awesome quirks. In Without Feathers, from which this story is taken, one of the plays is incredibly recursive and meta. I still want to perform it.

That's not defending this story, though. Just expressing a little love for Woody.

[davidw]

Can't someone be smart and innovative without necessarily being a "hacker"?

[unalone]

That raises the discussion of what a "hacker" is.

I don't like the word hacker myself. I think it's an unnecessary descriptor that raises more irritating arguments than it's worth. In that regards it's similar to calling somebody an "artist", though in the latter case there's slightly more weight behind the word.

If we're going to use the word "hacker", though, then having a play that features the cast calling up Woody Allen and asking him what to do next is a hack in that it subverts the format of the play.