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Excellent article btw.

You say there's nothing wrong with tinkering but it's a fairly derogatory word. From dictionary.com [0], it's specified as:

> an unskillful or clumsy worker; bungler.

Certainly here in HN and in computing in general, the term hacker might be more fitting.

[0]: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/tinkering

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Good point, I could have used "hacker" instead, though that's more specific to writing software. I didn't perceive "tinkerer" as a word with negative connotations when I wrote it.

Come to think of it, many outside the hacker community would perceive "hacker" more negatively than "tinkerer", because many people still think of hackers as criminal. At least that's my perception. I guess words have different values in different contexts.

Although modern usage of the word “hacker” has been applied to non-software contexts, I’ve also seen the term “maker” used here as well.

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