[ForHackernews]

Honestly, I think part of this is because the word(s) "hack"/"hacker" have gotten really played out. At one time, 'hacker' had pretty specific[0], if not always easily-defined meanings. You might not be able to articulate what makes a great hack (quick: what do phone phreaking and putting a cop car on the MIT dome have in common?), but you knew it when you saw it.

Nowadays, "hacker" has cultural cachet so we get lifehackers, growth-hackers, hackathons, etc.

In my curmudgeonly opinion, none of these are really hackers or about hacking. Real hackers (I do not consider myself one) need to do a better job of policing the use of the word "hacker", but they tend to be terrible at doing so, because they remember what it's like to be socially excluded and don't want to be seen as socially exclusionary.

[0] http://catb.org/jargon/html/index.html

[r0naa]

This is funny because whenever I get into an argument on HH about the "true" meaning of the term hacker I end-up posting this link to catb. It usually ends up with me being called a nostalgic conservative.

tl;dr: Apparently I am 19 years old nostalgic.

[ForHackernews]

Yeah, it's always going to spark arguments. There are many of people who are invested in calling themselves hackers, and some of them want to be cool but don't want to be associated with those scary criminals, so they'll try and tell you certain hackers are "actually not hackers, but crackers" and the whole thing gets derailed into a Hackier-Than-Thou competition.

From my perspective, there's a certain je ne sais quoi of real hacking, and it has nothing to do with churning out an MVP in a weekend. In fact, sometimes the greatest hacks are the least practical.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Real-li...

[dropit_sphere]

If you adhere to a tradition, you get to borrow its age :)

http://xkcd.com/297/