[tester34]

>The site is basically a game if you're optimizing for points, and it's better designed than reddit because you have to actually know things to get them.

Haha.

Actually HN seems to be least technical community (when it comes to arguing) out of all those I know (reddit, forums)

Discussions raaarelly *try* to go into the technical details, let alone deeply. I don't think I've seen more than 5 code snippets over year on HN

Not only HN's format doesn't favor this kind of discussions, but also it seems that people prefer more "abstract" more "fancy" topics

[prepend]

I get the feeling that people here do know deep technically and code, but talk about things that don’t frequently use this knowledge.

I think this because every time there’s a coding topic, we’ll get really specific, targeted coding comments that are relevant and make sense.

I meet a lot of ex-programmers now in “higher” positions that don’t allow programming. And many times they’ve expressed that they wish they were programming and look for excuses to allow programming. It’s kind of unique in what’s been shared to me. But I wonder if it’s the same for ex-accountants and others who love a profession but grew out of it for the money.

[caslon]

Those threads earn so few points they're barely worth mentioning. I'm talking about point-earning. Technical threads earn lots of points, and are in the scope of this discussion because of it.

I will point out, though, that throwing code over the wall doesn't necessarily point toward one forum being more technical than another. A discussion on type systems or hygienic macros has far more technical depth than someone responding to a post with a code example of how to do something in React.

[fragmede]

Even if they do, the number of people on HN that are able to give well-versed, in-depth comments, that are also accessible to a broader audience on a technical subject (eg BPF and eBPF) is vanishingly small, but also the number of readers for deep topics (deep, not technical vs non-technical eg wittgensteinproject.org) is also small, and are thus not worth farming for karma. For better or worse.