Hacker News Appreciation
As the end of the year 2024 draws to a close, I want to take a minute (“just sit right there”) and wax appreciative about the website Hacker News.
Hacker News is a technology-focused discussion forum that gravitates toward startup culture and innovation. Created by the tech startup incubator Y Combinator, it features a minimalist design with user-submitted stories and comments ranked by user votes. Downvotes are allowed only by users with at least 100 karma points, which are earned by submitting articles and comments.
One of my favorite aspects of the site is its simple design. Like Craigslist, it hasn’t changed much since its inception. It eschews graphics and fancy web features to maintain a simple, reliable, and fast experience. It looks nearly identical on desktop and phone - there’s no responsive design that most users have come to expect from modern websites. I consider this a good thing since it removes distractions and lets the user focus on the content.
Another great thing about the site is its Guidelines, which are strictly enforced by the moderators and community. These guidelines, like the site design itself, keep the user focused on the content rather than on drama, self-promotion, or other distractions that often litter other social news sites.
Under “What to Submit” the guidelines page has this to say:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.
I love that focus on intellectual curiosity. It goes on to state:
Please don’t use HN primarily for promotion. It’s ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
and
Be kind. Don’t be snarky. Converse curiously; don’t cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
In the olden golden days of the early 2000’s, I frequented other social news sites including Reddit, Slashdot, and Fark. I enjoyed them at the time. Slowly, ads began to appear, and then site redesigns, which seemed to move the user experience in the wrong direction. I soon became disillusioned with the general vibe of these sites and looked for alternatives. I felt like they were being overrun by users who were not interested in intellectual curiosity, though I want to be careful not to dismiss all of these sites outright. Many of them still have corners that maintain an atmosphere conducive to curiosity and intellectual discovery.
At first when I encountered HN, I was intimidated. In 2007, when the site was created, I was only a few years into my software development career and had been swimming in a very small pond (a family startup), which had held me back in many ways. I had not been exposed to the kind of bright curious minds that frequent HN and if you’re not accustomed to the discourse on the site, it can seem almost threatening to engage in conversation. It wasn’t until 2018 that I even had the courage to create a username and begin posting submissions and comments. And it wasn’t until 2023 that I earned enough karma (100) to issue downvotes. In fact, my first several submissions were off topic, which I didn’t grasp at the time.
At one point in my career I had the opportunity to work with a semi-famous programmer — we’ll call him Andy — who had worked on a project I admired. He was a great source of information and encouragement during my time at the company. One day on our internal Slack chat I mentioned a hacker news article that was related to his line of work and I suggested he comment on it. His response was “Hacker news - I just don’t.” That surprised me. Why was this intelligent person so averse to a site that seemed right up his alley? It was a few weeks later, after observing his conduct at the company, that I understood why. While he was supportive of folks like myself who were aligned with his specific notion of intellectualism, his ego seemed to trip him up in non-engineering circles, such as in conversations with marketing or product teams. He seemed to bring a kind of intellectual elitism to meetings that was not productive. He was dismissed from the company after about a year and I strongly suspect it was because he rubbed some folks in those non-engineering circles the wrong way.
His dismissal was a valuable lesson to me and it encouraged humility in my own work and comments. When I carried this humility to my comments on HN, I was rewarded with upvotes. Recently, I passed the milestone of 1,000 karma points on the site. That may not be much karma for many users of the site but for me it’s an important milestone in my continuous journey to being a curious mind that eschews elitism and ego in every social situation.
These days I check Hacker News multiple times a day and read through many of the articles (though I admit I ask ChatGPT to summarize some that are lengthy or over my head). I hope it remains as it is now - a place where curious minds can share information and level up without drama or elitism.
