There are a few reasons that I can think of off the top of my head. 1. Climbing is a mental sport. It's mostly overcoming your fear of falling and trying to fi

There are a few reasons that I can think of off the top of my head. 1. Climbing is a mental sport. It's mostly overcoming your fear of falling and trying to figure out the most efficient way up the rock. Every climb is a "problem" and a lot of the climbs are not straight forward and require thought to the best way to do it. 2. More thinking. Getting into the trad climbing you are responsible for setting up your gear and making sure that it will hold in a fall. There are a lot of rules and best practices here so hackers tend to like this aspect. 3. A lot of hackers are looking for exercises that they can do and that is fun. If you look at stereotypes for hacker types there are two main ones that I can think of: tall and lanky, short and overweight. The short and overweight are at a distinct disadvantage in climbing but the tall and lanky are "built" for it. 4. Good way to meet people. Climbers tend to be an welcoming group(unless you go to a gym with a lot of gym rats but outdoors it's better usually.) 5. you get to geek out about the gear. marvel at the amazing simple but powerful design of the modern spring loaded camming systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-loaded_camming_device http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-loaded_camming_device 6. I am sure I could think of more but those are a first pass approximation.