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Comment by barrell | Hacker News Reader

The bias in this comparison is insane. “Tinkerer” is a pejorative, normally used to downplay one’s (own) ability or impact. It’s often used to mean “unserious” or “amateur”.

The same comparison could be said the other way around: there are entrepreneurs, who care deeply about the product, inside and out; and scammers, who don’t care about the problem itself or the beauty of a a neat solution, but only the sales of the end product.

Entrepreneurs currently are in hell, and a scammers are in heaven.

I don’t think either is more apt or more offensive, they just appeal to whichever side of the fence your on.

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My bad, I'm not a native English speaker.

I've always though that about tinkering as in "being in love to work with inner working of things and understanding the internals, mastering stuff". Nothing pejorative.

Tinkering is more or less synonymous with dabbling, which is used more these days. Synonyms with tinkerer would be amateur, hobbiest, dabbler. There’s definitely an implied interest in how things work, but also strongly implies that one is not serious about what they’re doing.

More in line with your definition would be artisan or craftsman; although fwiw craftsman can have a negative slant in modern (American) English as some people use it in lieu of blue-collar workers.

Other way around: Artisan is the negative one with implied pretentiousness, craftsman is the positive one that implies high skill.

I agree artisan can be a bit pretentious, but calling someone an artisan != calling someone pretentious, whereas calling someone a craftsman (to some people) == calling someone blue collar, someone who works in the crafts/went to craft school.

You were right with your usage of tinkerer, he was just offended

“Unskilled” is quite literally in the definition of tinkerer. It explicitly implies a lack of mastery.

I think the term in the original comment that you're referring to was "craftsman", not "tinkerer".

Since there is an entire AI community[0], claiming 135,000 members, that labels themselves 'tinkerers', any pejorative meaning in tinkerer is long gone. Probably in the same way as 'hacker' was once a rather pejorative term to the general public.

[0] https://aitinkerers.org/

The definition of tinkerer is “An unskilled person who tries to fix or mend”. Someone making a slack channel with a diminuative moniker does not change the meaning of the word.

You would not want a surgeon who says that they’ve tinkered around with surgery. You would not want a pilot who says they’re tinkered around with piloting.

Synonyms are quite literally beginner; dilettante; novice; pretender; uninitiate.

I am not challenging the definition, only your "pejorative" connotation, which is simply incorrect. Everyone is a beginner at some point. Does that make "beginner" pejorative?

Depends. If you’re using is disparagingly, then yes, it is a pejorative.

For example from the original analogy, if you told an entrepreneur that because they didn’t use AI, they were not an entrepreneur, but instead “unskilled” or a “beginner”, that would be disparaging; pejorative.

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