The combination of Octopress being built on top of Jekyll and the fact that Octopress is much faster/easier to jump into and do things with makes Octopress more hacker friendly in the "get things done" hacking way.
Have you looked at vanilla Jekyll recently? There have been a whole lot of changes. Sure, when you type `jekyll new x` you don't get as much, but it still gives you a very acceptable starting point.
I realize that my first sentence may come across as harsh, but I mean it in a 'look, this is cool' way, and not an incredulous way.
