[depr]

When can we be done with these cheap comments? It has really become tiring to have a comment tree on every HN post for people who don't know what the article is about. As the author often didn't submit their own article it is just a complaint with no possible resolution. Instead of taking a few seconds to find out what the article is about and maybe even clarifying it for your fellow readers, you are taking that time to write a comment that only detracts from a possible conversation.

If you can't bring yourself to search for 5 seconds and find out what an article is about, maybe you just close it and move on.

[hatefulheart]

Agreed.

The tone in which people like the parent comment is disgraceful. I’m sorry this is hacker news and hackers know that BEAM is the Erlang VM, no introduction or explanation needed. It is respected and admired as a great piece of engineering to be studied by all hackers.

[mikestorrent]

I didn't know what it was, so I used the grand information retrieval device I was already sitting at to look it up

[Dylan16807]

Disgraceful? It's a pretty polite request.

> hackers know that BEAM is the Erlang VM, no introduction or explanation needed

This is some pretty intense gatekeeping, pal.

[potsandpans]

Hn has for the most part always been like this.

I still remember 14 years ago or so, when applied science posted his diy electron microscope build and a handful of top comments were low effort nerd snipes and criticisms.

Nothing to do about it, I don't think. Its the warty culture here.

[observationist]

> I was always fascinated with BEAM (Bogdan Erlang Abstract Machine, a VM for languages like Erlang and Gleam) and how it allowed easy spawning of processes that didn’t share state, allowed for sending and selectively receiving messages, and linking to each other thus enabling creation of supervision trees.

That's all it takes. When you're writing about a niche topic (and nearly everything and anything interesting is a niche topic) then explain your jargon. It's considerate, reminds people who are familiar but might have forgotten, and introduces people unfamiliar with it to what your topic is.

Sometimes people want to understand what they're reading about and not have to play a little "guess what this is about" game. Clarity is a quality of good writing.

[itishappy]

The intended audience is Code BEAM Europe 2025 attendees.

[mjaniczek]

Hey all, I've just added a paragraph about this. Thanks for the feedback.

[themafia]

> It has really become tiring to have a comment tree on every HN post

Has it actually? Why is this "tiring?"

> When can we be done with these cheap comments?

Do what most other people did. Write a cheap reply.

> you are taking that time to write a comment that only detracts from a possible conversation.

Just click the little [-].

> maybe you just close it and move on.

Ironic.

[depr]

You do have a point there. I did forget about the [-].

However, I read the comments in hopes they are interesting. If we have a culture where the "I don't know what this thing is"-type comment is popular, people will post those comments more and more. This leads other people to spend their time replying to it, instead of engaging with the content of the article. In other words, it distracts other commenters, who might otherwise have contributed something good.

Second, I think having low value comments is undesirable by itself. We could all start posting "First!" on articles, and everyone who hates that can simply minimize them. I think you can see why that would not be great. We can argue whether this is a low-value comment but I already did that in my original reply: it is not addressed to the article author (in this case they happened to show up but generally they don't) so the complaint doesn't lead to anything, and the comment complains about having to read about a concept they are not familiar with, but does the exact same thing itself.