HackerNews gives me the freedom to say contrarian things without instantly being down-voted to hell. HackerNews also encourages me to be level-headed and polite. The mods here are mature and are relatively unbiased. I like this one intellectual feed over Reddit's many frivolous subreddits. Does the subreddit differentiation tend to attract low quality mods and users? Probably. But Idk.
If contrarian debate includes technical debate, I learned that I enjoy reading the counter arguments for programming solutions that I'd probably not learn about, if for any reason I am by experience or knowledge or style or ability, the longer in tooth or lesser as is inevitable in this Cambrian explosion of the web, if I'm going to instinctively assume that I would take another approach to the similar goal. Learning about the depth and even shallowness of the industry that touches large database installations has been most eye opening, in a good way, to this fifth decade enterprise maven. This, and comparing my experience with start-up in the early nineties, and generally the sheer variety of voices, keeps me returning
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