It does; the old school hackers, the people who built the computer and software industry, loved logic puzzles / brainteasers and elegant, high performance solutions to coding challenges.
Most of the pushback is from dull corporate programmers (no shame in that, so am I) who want to claim that they are hackers for the clout but aren't. Ironic that a site named Hacker News is almost entirely devoid of true hackers.
