These articles that you think are useless put the technology we love to read about into a social context. I personally think this site has a great balance of low-level programming topics and high-level context articles. If the site ONLY had the articles you deem as "useful" then it wouldn't be so damn addictive and wouldn't be nearly as popular. I'm sure you'd love a small community so that you can feel special that you know about something no one else does - but I think Y Combinator is probably trying to build a popular site that they can potentially make money on some day. To that end they're doing a hell of a job so far.
As someone who browses here most days, it seems packed full of programming related content. Perhaps this is a matter of perspective dependent on your individual programming background?
Quick straw poll as of right now: 4 of the top 5 on the front page are programming related (the 5th is an Ars article about Donkey Kong).
Out of the entire front page 30, there's:
- 13 programming related,
- 5 about the use of software,
- 1 about an arcade game (also software, I guess)
- 2 about Google/Facebook as companies,
- 2 about physics,
- 1 about office space/working environments,
- 1 about stock options (an unusually low number for a YC news site),
Even though I had to highlight the text of your comment to read it, you do echo a point that has kind of irritated me somewhat. On a website called "hacker news", 90% (hyperbole) of the links are related to designing flashy GUIs and selling social web startups and whatever the flavor-of-the-week web design trend is. There's very little "do it yourself, do it quickly, do what no one has done before" spirit, it's mostly "do what everyone has done before, but flashier and in a newer language".
Not that it's a bad thing in any way, but the title of "hacker news" is a bit disingenuous when "developer news" might be a little more accurate. I wish I could filter out the programming and startup stuff.
Well, this is a site that a lot of programming nerds read. Programming articles seem to interest enough people here that they keep making the front page.
Maybe just ignore the articles that don't interest you?
> I'm not sure I understand where the pandering was, and for me the post certainly wasn't pointless
Yes it's not pointless the first time you see it. Where it becomes pointless is on Slashdot any time there is ever an article about a new program language and 2 or 3 people fill it out for the comments.
Does anyone still believe there are really any ground breaking insights to be made in these kind of self-loathing rhetoric articles?
Shouldn't there be more "You know what, sometimes just having something work is pretty much awesome" articles instead of everything fooling themselves that every programmer in the world needs to be a mini-genuis?
I find these articles very confusing. Sometimes there seems to be something substantial, sometimes not. As someone who has programmed large parallel machines, large distributed systems, and only dabbled in web programming, there seems to be a shed-load of stuff out there and no way to figure out what's real, what's fluff, what's substantial, what's new, and what's just stuff I already know, re-written and re-named by people who don't know what's gone before.
Now I know how my parents feel about technology, and I'm finding it hard to find a way to fight the tsunami of crap to find the nuggets of real information.
Sure, nothing against this perspective and glad that this line was mentioned. My main point is that this kind of article doesn't deserve to be front page HN since it mostly distracts people away from more important things. I find these 'productivity porn' articles to be overly superficial and limiting to the true progress of developers... I miss articles like those written by Martin Fowler, Alan Kay and others which tried to tackle the big problems. I feel that a lot of valuable programming knowledge from the past is being swept under the rug. The software industry seems to be getting dumbed down over the past decade.
It's just I'm tired of seeing all those "social" startup stories, and the thousands of posts in the intertubes typically from some aforementioned startup employee/founder using all the half-baked or ill-suited technologies du jour, and posting something better suited for Comp Sci 101 as a huge discovery.
That's what I deserve for scouting all over for some relevant Python/Ruby/Web dev etc articles, I guess.
(disclosure: I work in a startup, but one developing, gasp an actual product (!), sold to the customer etc, employing several PHD guys to code in good ole C and implement new hardcore algorithms for our class of problems.).
Yeah bro it is. I'm bored, browsing HN, seeing articles I've already disliked.
The article seems to blame the programming language for the issues cause by the social involvement of the community.. and laziness to research and find a good environment to develop with.. come the fuck on. If you're a programmer, you're a problem solver. Don't bitch about solving one..
OK, maybe I should have been more specific. Somehow that article really annoyed me: "code is only worth 0.83$, because I can code a for loop in 30 seconds". Hm, not very convincing. "Code is worthless once the original programmers are gone" - just a claim, without any statistical backing. Personally I think it is conceivable to actually dig through somebody elses sourcecode and understand it.
I wonder if such articles are just written for "karma whoring", or if they really express a heartfelt concern of the author.
EDIT: Reading the comments here (and over there) reaffirms the correctness of my decision not to get into definitions about "what is a programmer" with technical folks! Lots of great ideas, very little organization.
The funny thing is, it's possible to do a post about what really makes a programmer -- but nobody would read it. People would happily read articles about the importance of programming, the importance of programmers, etc, Emotional, take-a-stand articles are fun to read and comment on, even (or especially) if the definition of the thing discussed is so vague!
I'm not sure if that is a bug of human nature or a feature.
I just wanted to point out that one of the points is programmers don't like useless participation that doesn't really add value. Half the article's comments(at the point of this posting) are "nice article" and "thanks"
On the contrary, as a C# developer I find tons of useful information there especially in advanced issues. And the discussion is also useful because they present solutions from different angles. Perhaps SO is better suited for those on the Desktop frontier rather than mobile or web development.
Seriously, it's the very real hacker news circlejerk.
I would be more interested about an article titled "From Zend Framework to Django" (or whatever language/framework) than the thousandth article "Your language is bad and you should feel bad".
I don't think the claim with such posts is that they're newsworthy, just that they're fun or interesting (for some).
It's better for the emotional aspect of technical work to be out in the open, instead of rationalizing itself surreptitiously, as it usually has to—leading to such unproductive phenomena as (a) the sober engineering analysis that just happens to conclude that the best choice for X is programmer's favorite; and (b) the intellectual depression that comes from prolonged working with tools that give one no pleasure. "There is no play in them," as Thoreau said.
The need for play is deep and should be accommodated, since it affects things whether we want it to or not. I think if one revises one's model of software economics to include this factor then the yet-another projects you're criticizing come out looking pretty different. Also the HN connection is clear—this is a site where gratifying curiosity and creative impulses is celebrated. No justification required.
But I'm glad you've registered anyhow. Hopefully you'll discuss some of the things that gratify you!
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