You aren't getting any better

I'm not saying that words cannot get new meaning in some new emerging contexts. Languages evolve, that goes without saying. But when people start to deteriorate their meaning within the same context, mostly to be able to use these terms themselves, thus feeling a bit better or cooler (because these terms used to describe exceptional people), then something wrong is happening.

> As such, a lot of people here don't do deep hacking stuff. They do simple web services...

And it's fine, really. I'm not bashing HN community for submitting stories not worth of "hacking" (according to "old meaning", as you named it) emblem (it's really nice when such stories appear, though), because on-topic is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". I'm criticizing overuse of all hack* nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and what not. I believe that most people here can tell the difference between slick and shiny CSS date picker and system emulation done using JS for instance (to stay in the browser realm). Not everyone is like Bellard, but does it mean we need to redefine "hacker" to allow its wider use and prevent covering this term in dust as the time goes? Hell no.

> So, seeing that HN has tons of introductory or trivial Node, Mongo and similar articles, why should you expect to see the "old meaning" of hacker here?

Because it's part of computer-related legacy.

Doing fun things (everyone perceive "fun" differently) doesn't need to be hard and is quite healthy. Sharing and spreading the fun is definitely ok too. But let's not pretend that doing anything fun in CS field is immediately hacking, because it's not. HN is thankfully full of people aware of it, so I'm not afraid about HN future, yet.

I see that only people clung to their misuse of hacker and related terms are advocating that the meaning has changed. Well, for mass-media hackers are computer criminal, should we acknowledge it and stop using the term in an original computer-related meaning?

Hackers in fact rarely refers to themselves by this term. They are also quite modest and open to any critique, contrary to many boastful youngsters calling themselves "hackers".

> People call themselves hackers in admiration of the kind of hacking you point to.

Hackers admiration is fine, but the logic is flawed. Admiration alone doesn't change you into the one you admire, so it's quite awkward calling oneself someone she or he is not yet, don't you think?

> Also, as another commenter pointed out, programmers call themselves hackers to speak to say "I would be programming even if it didn't pay the bills."

"I would be hacking even if it didn't pay the bills." -> thinking or saying that doesn't make anyone a "hacker", even more if we're talking about "programming".

Hacker - programmer that is not afraid of starving. Amusing definition.

> If anything I'd say your reverence for the term itself is dangerously close to hero worship, if not outright hero worship.

Worship? I call it accuracy.

> Identifying with the culture of the hackers you're referring to helps us keep our sights on being our best selves and serves as a reminder what kind of work is top notch.

Sure, I don't see anything wrong in identifying with (meant as aiming to become part of) the culture of the hackers, but calling myself a hacker just because of my aspirations would be plainly wrong, so I cannot commend such practices.

A typical corporate scenario can be that you are satisfying some very real needs, but you are reporting to other/different people than those -- people who may have or come to have very different goals.

This is a recipe for getting screwed.