In fact, one of the inspirations of the use of the word "hacker" was that they broke the rules.
This could just be "engineer news", but it is "hacker news" because PG is celebrating those who took unconventional approaches.
That's what a hack is.
The problem is, when a site becomes mainstream popular it brings in a lot of people outside of its core demographic. In this case, there are a lot of people who are not engineers who think that engineering is cool, and want to think that they are elite.
And when someone is a poser, they know they don't measure up, so they try and define who the "legit" ones are.
You see this posturing among teenagers a lot. (maybe a lot of Hacker News visitors are just out of their teens?)
This could just be "engineer news", but it is "hacker news" because PG is celebrating those who took unconventional approaches.
That's what a hack is.
The problem is, when a site becomes mainstream popular it brings in a lot of people outside of its core demographic. In this case, there are a lot of people who are not engineers who think that engineering is cool, and want to think that they are elite.
And when someone is a poser, they know they don't measure up, so they try and define who the "legit" ones are.
You see this posturing among teenagers a lot. (maybe a lot of Hacker News visitors are just out of their teens?)