It depends on how you look at the words hacker and tech savvy. Tech savvy these days is anyone with enough common sense to know their way around the computer to accomplish tasks, it is just a matter of digging and googling now. So everyone in this forum is "tech-savvy". So then it is not a moot point because some assume the title of hacker when they have not even took one step inside of bash (I have lurked in the background while I read people speak about hacker being a flexible term that can be applied anywhere but then it becomes one of those metaphors - He was able to put together that item as savvy as a hacker with his tools not a different set of meanings). Hacker is now used for every and anything so the value in the word is lost. 1337 has become a big joke and more of a game play slang. HackerNews (change ay yc spotlight, entrepreneurship,politics,web design freelancing,life advice, jobs, apple, microsoft , app development etc etc.) ,Household Hacker , Hacker (the Movie) all watered down and sometimes misused version of the original meaning.
If hackerly means using tools without needing to know the inner workings then I guess that is one man's way to put it, because you will want to remove the boring repetitive sections of your method and make it automated (not having to resolve the problem every time). An other way would be to open things and observe until it is understood how it works.
You can also think of the a graphic designer being offended every time someone says they know web/graphic design because they got a pirated version of Photoshop and Dreamweaver online.
Or when people "hack" in games, they are using software that exploited the system. He (the original coder) has accomplished his task maybe even learned something new (about the registry , about game mechanics) along the way... The teenager on the other hand who acquired the software ends up just trying to feel like he is better than everyone else when in fact he has unfair advantage. No real "superiority" there.
Useless battle or not, it is a title the author prefers to keep as clean as possible (even if that puts him in a elite set)