[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 ?