With the enormous amount of time we all waste in cheap entertainment this days, I think the willingness to spend as much time digging and tweaking and hacking is to be celebrated.
I would think that on HN one of these would automatically be considered more worthy of one's time than the other.
He told me that the idea was to 'shut his brain off' from his day-to-day work, while other more intensive hobbies would drain him further.