This is my first time registering and posting on HN.
All of that comes from someone posting on a Web 20 social blog news aggregator of a forum, that's surely powered by some webscale MongoDB Ruby on Rails web app, where everyone is hellbent on taking back the word hack as they attempt to score some "serious" Venture Capital to create the next hot microvlogging service, or perhaps the next hot Android and iOS compatible remote Arduino LED blinking mobile app. I seriously don't understand the motivation.
I wasn't addressing you at all. In fact, I thought you were talking about someone else entirely.
Regardless, as an outsider peering inside, it does seem a bit strange. One of the things effecting my perception is the simple question I ask myself looking at posts like the one you describe. "Does this have any chance of making money?"
Because if it doesn't, I always wonder what the motivation was for making a service for which there are 50 implementations already. I've probably written under 500 lines of code in my life, because I can't justify it to myself to build an application nobody needs, even for practice.
At any rate, the "hack" itself is it's own sort of art. With an almost intangible feeling of delight when executed successfully. I can't really quantify it myself to be honest. And I've only experienced it once.
TL;DR: The short answer is, people here find that stuff fun.
