What's Wrong with Your Definition of “Hacker”

Decent read.

I do disagree a bit with this point:

"What is useful, and what is core to the identity of a hacker, I think, is putting in extra effort to make sure the solution she came up with impacts most, if not all, those who experience that problem."

It's nice but not necessary to put in that extra effort--in fact, the notion of a "clever hack" is typically hyper-specialized to the environment where it is deployed. For example, some of the numerical hacks and assembly hacks and whatnot are useless or downright troublesome outside of the context they were developed for.

I think the idea more core to hackerdom is that the solution is the result of play, and is almost always subversive--either subverting the assumptions of the system it is being used to adjust, or subverting assumptions of the people who are used to that system.

If there's no subversive element, I don't really think it's a hack, nor the person who makes it, a hacker. A good engineer, certainly--but not a hacker!