This is as meta as it gets, but I learned what it sounds like when smart sounding, but closed minded people try to shut down an idea.
Looking over all the old YC projects that ended up being wildly successful, but their HN threads were full of naysayers who are better at sounding smart on the internet than providing actual feedback. Learning to differentiate between that kind of poster and people who have genuine feedback that reflects what users actually want is invaluable.
Yep. This is why HN comments (and the site as a whole) have a bad rep among some of the tech crowd, esp the derisive references to the “orange site.”
To be clear: it is a culture issue, not a moderation issue. dang does a fine job of moderating. The problem is that we allow the cheap takes and well-actually’s to both exist and be highly visible via upvotes.
I’m not sure HN at large really wants to fix this, unfortunately. It is pervasive and largely unchecked.
Being wildly successful doesn't mean the idea wasn't bad. There's more than money and success that some "smart" people think of when complaining about ideas on here.
Yeah. Living in SF, where self-driving cars are a constant daily sight, I recently went back and read a HN thread from five years ago with comments like, “I work in the industry. There’s no way you’re going to be seeing them in 5-10 years.”
Someone should do a roundup of these kind of posts: the Dropbox announcement, etc
Wildly successful is kinda vague and subjective. Successful as a business is one thing, mass market adoption is another thing, both can happen but are they both "wildly successful"?
It provides me with a sense of community that I lack in my life. I am driven by technology but not a lot of other people in my life are interested in these things.
It's often providing me with "restore faith in humanity" experiences when I see exchanges in the comments where the worst impulses of humanity are expressed, and someone will respond with an eloquent and well articulated rebuttal to the insanity that society has normalized.
There are also lots of smart people saying really dumb shit on here as other comments have alluded to.
But overall, this is one place that consistently restores my hope that there are other people out there who think like I do and share even a few of my values.
I second this. Being a farmer with a huge interest in electronics and programming, I don't get to hang around like-minded people (generally, I barely to get to hang with people that have a decent grasp of their mother tongue, thus I just work and listen to podcasts and some audiobooks).
The hn comment section and some of the blogs I read here make the tech world something tangible, rather than something only happening in some far away land.
> It provides me with a sense of community that I lack in my life. I am driven by technology but not a lot of other people in my life are interested in these things.
You should try to find meet ups and/or hacker spaces if you live near an actual city. I've been to several countries and have always been able to find those (well, ok, except when I was in rural France with the closest real city a 1h30+ min drive or so).
You never know when knowledge on a scrap of paper floating in the wind turns out to be the key to the door of your destiny.
I've read this site for about 10 years now. The biggest thing is all the random blog posts I wouldn't ordinarily stumble upon. A lot of times, programming problems come up at work, and of course I know all the details of some arcane trivia because of 3 different articles I'd seen on it and different perspectives on it.
The biggest problem is then trying to go back and find which blog article I read. That's impossible.
not a perfect solution, might not work for everyone, but keeping a personal wiki (folder with markdown files, Emacs Org Mode, Obsidian, etc) has worked well for me. Better than thousands of browser bookmarks I had prior.
There's an HN post that takes first place on my bookmarks bar, which is an Ask HN about the best paper people read in 2020 [^1]. Every once in a while I'll open it and browse through a ton of amazing papers and research and try to learn something new. Hasn't let me down yet.
If you're always disagreeing with everyone about everything, first check (and if necessary install) the CO2 detectors in your primary living space. If symptoms persist, talk to a mental health professional -- even if you're in a locale that doesn't value such things, this tends to be surprisingly affordable. And, in the end, also surprisingly helpful.
my friend, CO2 is a natural part of the atmosphere and is emitted from your mouth with every breath you take. Carbon monoxide (CO) is the dangerous gas that you are thinking of.
The learning resources people share here are fantastic and leveled me up by a lot.
Whether it is SICP, Conway's Game of Life book, great MOOCs in Coursera or whatever!
My life has been changed by the gems of learning resources shared as submissions and comments.
And not only text or text-like material, the amount of good books I have found in the comments here are better than all other communities combines. I cannot put up a complete list- I found about Neal Stephenson from HN, and Cryptonomicon is in my top-5 novels. I also loved Diamond Age. I learned to meditate with Culadasa's book which I came to know about in HN comments. Not exaggerating, my life has taken a good turn because of meditation. I can spend at least the next five years reading great fiction and nonfiction recommended here.
I also come to know about many mental models, methods, etc. which have made me better.
I was born in a middle class family, and never was poor. But these were all unknown to me. HN has been an equalizer for me.
It's not one specific piece of information but how to deal with people.
In case you reply to somebody to explain why they are wrong, start a reply with a positive (nobody is 100% wrong) then tell them what you think they got wrong. It's much more effective.
Similarly, don't be snarky.
Source: observation of a zillion of threads and how they evolved in the two cases, and which ones were downvoted.
I do some programming, but I am an academic working outside academia, rather than a programmer. I love keeping up to date on the tech world here, and I have learned many important things that have helped me over the years. But what really keeps me here is something else. It doesn't always prove to be true, but the site is generally a calmer, more educated conversation than what I find on other sites. I don't have as much interaction with other educated people as I would like in my daily life, so these interactions, even if on subjects that are not my core interests, are quite valuable to me.
HN is a spark plug that caused various forward motions and explosions in my life.
I learned about open source and Linux; in time that went from a new hobby to a change of direction in my career.
I learned about startups, and figured I should try since I'm also a genius who can build a great product. It took quite a bit of money and time lost to convince me otherwise.
I found out about the online CS Masters program at Georgia Tech and did that a few years ago, this led to moving countries and getting a job doing AI.
This!!! I've struggled with impostor syndrome A LOT but coming here and seeing a lot of supposedly well paid, successful, highly educated people say the things they sometimes do... I don't mean to say I'm smarter, I'm just saying, it's comforting.
Sounds bad, but just change "dumb" for "naive" or "biased" and we agree.
To be more specific, it helps me identify the ways people gets behind some weird idea and maybe why. Same goes for the negativity that someone mentions in another comment, it's the same to me: unexpected reactions that say more about who reacts than about the criticized idea.
In 2015 I stumbled upon the empathic reaction of Iranians on 9/11. From the article that had photos and cites from credible international newspapers to back it up, I browsed more on the blog and was fascinated by the photos. This was really an eye opening experience for me, understanding that we should not base our full view on news programs on TV, and I started to read more travel blogs to learn from travellers about foreign countries.
The original article was this one: https://theotheriran.com/2015/09/12/irans-exceptional-reacti...
I can recommend everyone to skim the photos, covering many aspect of Iranians lives that we cannot imagine.
I had a Iranian girl sitting next to me in one of my classes during the Iranian hostage crisis. I can not not think of her sitting there in class as students would go off about what they wanted to do to Iran.
Drove home to me that the small groups of people that run all the various countries have their agendas and spats with each other that have little to do with the interests of the populous.
The less-than-wildly popular posts are where the gold is. The 1000+ voted posts are usually not very interesting (but probably rage-inducing to some part of the community, for sure), but looking through a few hundred posts with a couple tens of votes each usually brings up something worth reading to the end.
The discussion has been what brings me back. I comment a lot on HN which is an exception for me online and I find the replies I get are very thoughtful, even when they disagree. Every now and then I comment on something and someone comes in with a reply that shifts my perspective. That's what excites me.
Within an hour of the Log4shell bug becoming public, I was able to inform our team and figure out how it impacted us. Yes we do have subscriptions to alerts from security services whose job it is to track this kind of thing but feeling like I can keep on top of the most critical security issues along with them feels quite valuable.
A few recommendations of truly good books about computer programming. That, or perhaps in general seeing work or prose of extremely skilled programmers, which lets one know, how much one still has to learn, avoiding ones own skill to plateau, because of thinking, that one already knows all there is to know.
[+] [-] bsamuels|2 years ago|reply
Looking over all the old YC projects that ended up being wildly successful, but their HN threads were full of naysayers who are better at sounding smart on the internet than providing actual feedback. Learning to differentiate between that kind of poster and people who have genuine feedback that reflects what users actually want is invaluable.
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|2 years ago|reply
To be clear: it is a culture issue, not a moderation issue. dang does a fine job of moderating. The problem is that we allow the cheap takes and well-actually’s to both exist and be highly visible via upvotes.
I’m not sure HN at large really wants to fix this, unfortunately. It is pervasive and largely unchecked.
[+] [-] polishdude20|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|2 years ago|reply
Someone should do a roundup of these kind of posts: the Dropbox announcement, etc
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] matt_s|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nithayakumar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dirtybirdnj|2 years ago|reply
It's often providing me with "restore faith in humanity" experiences when I see exchanges in the comments where the worst impulses of humanity are expressed, and someone will respond with an eloquent and well articulated rebuttal to the insanity that society has normalized.
There are also lots of smart people saying really dumb shit on here as other comments have alluded to.
But overall, this is one place that consistently restores my hope that there are other people out there who think like I do and share even a few of my values.
[+] [-] monnow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|2 years ago|reply
You should try to find meet ups and/or hacker spaces if you live near an actual city. I've been to several countries and have always been able to find those (well, ok, except when I was in rural France with the closest real city a 1h30+ min drive or so).
[+] [-] seeknotfind|2 years ago|reply
I've read this site for about 10 years now. The biggest thing is all the random blog posts I wouldn't ordinarily stumble upon. A lot of times, programming problems come up at work, and of course I know all the details of some arcane trivia because of 3 different articles I'd seen on it and different perspectives on it.
The biggest problem is then trying to go back and find which blog article I read. That's impossible.
[+] [-] moralestapia|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frfl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andremedeiros|2 years ago|reply
[^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25346456
[+] [-] talaba|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PreInternet01|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dontcontactme|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __rito__|2 years ago|reply
Whether it is SICP, Conway's Game of Life book, great MOOCs in Coursera or whatever!
My life has been changed by the gems of learning resources shared as submissions and comments.
And not only text or text-like material, the amount of good books I have found in the comments here are better than all other communities combines. I cannot put up a complete list- I found about Neal Stephenson from HN, and Cryptonomicon is in my top-5 novels. I also loved Diamond Age. I learned to meditate with Culadasa's book which I came to know about in HN comments. Not exaggerating, my life has taken a good turn because of meditation. I can spend at least the next five years reading great fiction and nonfiction recommended here.
I also come to know about many mental models, methods, etc. which have made me better.
I was born in a middle class family, and never was poor. But these were all unknown to me. HN has been an equalizer for me.
[+] [-] pmontra|2 years ago|reply
In case you reply to somebody to explain why they are wrong, start a reply with a positive (nobody is 100% wrong) then tell them what you think they got wrong. It's much more effective.
Similarly, don't be snarky.
Source: observation of a zillion of threads and how they evolved in the two cases, and which ones were downvoted.
[+] [-] sgc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phugoid|2 years ago|reply
I learned about open source and Linux; in time that went from a new hobby to a change of direction in my career.
I learned about startups, and figured I should try since I'm also a genius who can build a great product. It took quite a bit of money and time lost to convince me otherwise.
I found out about the online CS Masters program at Georgia Tech and did that a few years ago, this led to moving countries and getting a job doing AI.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] paulcole|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bedobi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narag|2 years ago|reply
To be more specific, it helps me identify the ways people gets behind some weird idea and maybe why. Same goes for the negativity that someone mentions in another comment, it's the same to me: unexpected reactions that say more about who reacts than about the criticized idea.
[+] [-] checkyoursudo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solardev|2 years ago|reply
Was there a particular thread that discussed this?
[+] [-] JohnnyIrish1956|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gibbon1|2 years ago|reply
Drove home to me that the small groups of people that run all the various countries have their agendas and spats with each other that have little to do with the interests of the populous.
[+] [-] l0b0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willio58|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] spuz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelphirkalt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genmud|2 years ago|reply