Sure, the hacking itself is nonsense, but it depicted a bunch of people from diverse backgrounds coming together in a shared love of computers and curiosity. They hack because it's interesting, challenging and fun.
As a bonus, the rollerblade-friendly arcade bar thing—Cyberdelia—is the coolest place I've ever seen.
The actual computer bits were outlandish, sure, but that tongue is so firmly planted in a cheek that you can see it from orbit.
Interpreting, modifying, and fitting together higher-dimensional structures is a pretty accurate analogy of what my average day to day feels like, at the 1,000 ft level.
Also, some Orbital, for retro kicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-hSgL1R74
Edit: For those who want support from the work itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMvYx11V-Y&t=4s. The writers / directors were well aware of what actual computer code looks like.
There's also an East Coast / West Coast dynamic involved. West Coast hacking was optimistic/idealistic about depth of knowledge and engineering, and East Coast was more cynical/realistic about social groups and control. Compare Apple to Facebook, the Homebrew Computer Club to 2600 magazine, custom hardware to script kiddies. This movie is a hip Hollywood take on the East Coast scene, while War Games and Sneakers are West.
Hackers was originally a guilty pleasure, but it's aged very well. I was happened to watch it again last week, and organizing a global DDoS to take down a command and control node for an industrial control virus and prevent a terrorist attack was a bit ahead of its time. Part of the visionary magic was directly involving the community, particularly Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600.
I wish the business side of it was doing a better job though. There has always been a cult following that they aren't tapping into... The original may be a poorly typeset laser printout, but why has there never been an official "Trust Your Technolust" poster?