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.