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Comment by delano | Hacker News Reader

Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.

That's one reasonable definition of hacking, but the examples he gives are trite. Changing a single letter on the sign of a school that no one has heard of is not interesting or notable. It's not even amusing. ("Customer Training College" to "Customer Draining College".)

He also contradicts that definition with:

I realized that if I could come up with a way [to eat with 6 chopsticks], it would be a hack. -- That train of thought is not playful, it's pretentious.

He had topped my hack. Was his action, too, a hack? I think so. Is he therefore a hacker? That depends on how much he likes to hack. -- So playful or not, if you're outdoing Richard Stallman, it's not hacking.

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He said he thought it was a hack in the text you quoted. Where do you get "if you're outdoing Richard Stallman, it's not hacking."? Is that an expression of your own opinion, or is it intended to be a restatement of something Richard said? If so, what?

That expression is my joke based on the content and context of that essay.

He's suggesting that his friend may not be a hacker simply because it depends on "how much he likes to hack". My issue with that is two-fold: 1) it introduces the idea that being a hacker requires some form of external judgement and 2) it contracts his initial point that playing is hacking.

That said, it's possible his friend specifically did not enjoy eating with two sets of chopsticks in one hand.

This topic shouldn't be taken seriously, so I'm hesitant to post; however, there's a precedent in opposition to your first point that external judgement is not required. From the New Hacker's Dictionary entry for hacker:

"It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled bogus). See also wannabee."

To what extent you may or may not like to hack does not depend on any external judgement, does it?

I think it's reasonable to judge that a fooer is someone who often engages in fooing rather than someone who has fooed once, for a number of values of foo — a dancer is someone who dances frequently, presumably because they like dancing, not someone who has danced once; a gardener is someone who gardens regularly, probably as a living, not someone who once pulled a weed; and similarly for values of foo including "paint", "box", "bricklay", "drum", and "hack". In none of these cases does it imply that the status is contingent on somebody else's judgment.

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