I couldn't think of any two concepts less associated with "hacking".

I think you may have an understanding of that word that is not very common.

It sounds like you're thinking about a "hack", as in quick and dirty solution.

But that does not relate to "hacking", and most certainly does not relate to "hacker ethos". And while "hacking" is sort of ambiguous, I don't recall ever seeing "hacker ethos" defined by quick and dirty solutions.

No, though those concepts are of course related historically, I'm not confusing the two.

The hacker's ethos is about freedom of information, freedom of access (apropos to this video about vibe coding accessibility tools), community, collaboration and so on.

I've never seen or heard "elegance" associated with hackers, hacking, the hacking ethos etc. If I were to go further, elegance as it is used here has some anti-hacker connotations, i.e. it is a gatekeeping term to separate "true" coders from "amateurs" which is very anti-hacker.

Anyway, I don't think I'm conflating these terms, but it could be true that my understanding of the hacker ethos is wrong.

> I've never seen or heard "elegance" associated with hackers, hacking, the hacking ethos etc. If I were to go further, elegance as it is used here has some anti-hacker connotations, i.e. it is a gatekeeping term to separate "true" coders from "amateurs" which is very anti-hacker.

This is where I would strongly disagree. Are you familiar with shibboleths like 1337?