Hackers don't write code because they want to make lots of money. Hackers write code because they are hackers. Building a viable business on top of that code may be a nice side effect of this.
It may be true if you're on a lake or in a bay, know the area well, and your intention is to just go and flex your sailing muscles. To practice, enjoy, check out something you're aware of but haven't actually navigated, or something else that's similarly within easy reach.
It loses its applicability when you consider that, no, some sailors actually do have destinations. And some trips are long or difficult enough that they do in fact require planning, specific goals, timelines, and all manner of other preparation.
I'm sure it's not a perfect metaphor, but the point is that the artificial limitation of "hackers hack to hack" is short-sighted and fundamentally flawed. Some do, some don't, and I would say most are somewhere in between. But please don't make the mistake -- on behalf of others -- of defining the entire community in terms of your preconceptions about what hackers do or don't value or attempt in an absolute sense.
This article is aiming for entrepreneurs who are building a product for others because no where in the article did he infer any possibility that the product/service is something they want regardless of others.
No, Linus built git to address the needs of a large community of Linux kernel developers:
Git development began after many developers of the Linux kernel chose to give up access to BitKeeper, a proprietary SCM system that had previously been used to maintain the project. The copyright holder of BitKeeper, Larry McVoy, had withdrawn free use of the product after he claimed that Andrew Tridgell had reverse-engineered the BitKeeper protocols.
Torvalds wanted a distributed system that he could use like BitKeeper, but none of the available free systems met his needs, particularly in terms of performance. Torvalds took an example of an SCM system requiring thirty seconds to apply a patch and update all associated metadata, and noted that this would not scale to the needs of Linux kernel development, where syncing with fellow maintainers could require 250 such actions at a time. His goal was for patches to take three seconds.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29#History
`Torvalds wanted a distributed system that he could use like BitKeeper, but none of the available free systems met his needs`
Just assume that any mention to 'hacker' in Hacker News has nothing to do with hacking, but with entrepreneurship.
There's always been a yin-yang between hacker and hustler here.
And I am glad this hasn't been destroyed as there is merit in the frame.
We hack and hustle customers and software.
We validate the market on both ends: business and product.
The problem I have with this article and your comment, is the generalization of the term "hackers". Is anyone that codes in their free time, a "hacker"? Is a software engineer that works full time at a company, a "hacker"? What about UI designers that write CSS? What about business guys who throw something together in HTML and jQuery? Are they hackers as well? Different people have different goals for what they are building or hacking on. I really don't understand how we are still throwing such vague terms around like we all fit in this one category of people, and we all want to achieve the same things.
I actually spent nearly an year writing a rather powerful and challenging mathmatical reasoning engine (heck it can not only solve but LEARN mathematics!) but i had no users in mind. So i could never explain to people why anyone wud want to use it. and that didnt really feel that good