Ask HN: What is a hacker

I would say it's anyone who finds a creative way to use something in a new and interesting way. This may include producing an entirely new thing or simply reworking some other thing -- or combining lots of different things together to serve a new purpose. Traditionally it applies mostly to technology but I don't see that as a restriction to the term at all. The first guy who figured out you could chip flint stones into very sharp spears to hunt with was a hardcore hacker.

I'll take the skeptical approach and say that "hacker" is a word used by certain people to define certain other people, and that we're as likely to figure out a good definition of "hacker" as we are of "love" or of "life".

Personally, I see a hacker as somebody that changes things in an unexpected way. It's the unexpected that makes somebody a hacker instead of a coder or an entrepreneur.

a modifier/a tweaker

One that explorers and executes options which were not necessarily originally intended.

When some call such figures hackers, they do not refer to any definition but rather the name as a role. When We think about what comes to mind when we think about a Hacker, what a hacker does, who a hacker is, what characteristics hackers express, what role hackers play in society, we extend the 'job title' to fill non-hackers which meet those characteristics.

an innovator

A hacker is somebody for whom not all solutions are equal; the more elegant is to be preferred.

Of course, definitions of elegance vary greatly :-)

i like unix terrorist's definitions from phrack 65: "hackers are people that gain unauthorized access/privileges to computerized systems...And what is up with the use of the term "cracker"? As far as I'm concerned, that term applies to people that bypass copyright protection mechanisms."