My impression is that "hacker" is a word that used to have a fairly specific meaning that has become more general over time, to the point that the differentiati

My impression is that "hacker" is a word that used to have a fairly specific meaning that has become more general over time, to the point that the differentiation between "software engineer" and "hacker" is more a question of how you self-designate rather than what you do. That said, "Hacker" is a bit counter-cultural. "Engineer" implies that you think of what you do as an extension of engineering. "Developer" is not particularly specific. Re: over-generalizing, I described what I think is a trend. You might argue that it is less pronounced than I seemed to indicate, but you can't legitimately say I'm over-generalizing (i.e. all trends are ipso facto "generalizations" of some sort)