Becoming a "great hacker" doesn't rely on novelty of solution. It relies on ingenuity. I'm currently writing a book, and in that book I make a claim: "engineer

Becoming a "great hacker" doesn't rely on novelty of solution. It relies on ingenuity. I'm currently writing a book, and in that book I make a claim: "engineers are addicted to problem solving." This ends up making the engineer apt to searching for a problem where there isn't one. If a problem has a solution, it is no longer a problem. The real question you are asking, or should be asking, is how do I figure out what the next unsolved problems are? The answer to that often lay here in the HN comments. We all have new needs daily. Find your needs, or others' needs, and discern whether those needs have solutions. If they do not have an existing solution, or if the existing solution is poorly constructed, there's a good place to start. Remember, you stand on the shoulders of those who come before you. Just because jQuery solves a problem doesn't mean its time to put jQuery on the shelf. It means it's time to push jQuery to its limits, use it and abuse it. That's what a hacker does.