Oh, c'mon. You lost that fight at least 15 years ago.
And have been completely obliterated lately due to all the "Someone hacked my Facebook" people -- what actually happened is they left it logged in and some intelligent fellow posted some horribly amusing and unique status message.
As long as programmers know the difference, I think that's all that matters. The media will do what it wants.
Came here to say that -- Although it has been my perception lately that we've been making progress in stealing the term 'hacker' back.
Only to have it co-opted to mean doing anything. "Hey, I just hacked my resume together in Microsoft Word!", "I just hacked dinner together with some pans and some food!", "That was a great hack putting together that email!"
Bah, they can have the verb. It's the noun, 'hacker', that doesn't have a satisfactory equivalent, IMO.
I'd like to verb to stay linked to the name too.
I hacked that app in one night, sounds pretty good to me.
Blame it on Hollywood.
I wonder if publicly calling yourself a hacker could be used as proof by law enforcement that you admit to engage in illegal activity.