4 votes

Thread of Brian Armstrong seeking cofounder on HN (2012)

7 comments

  1. [7]
    stu2b50
    (edited )
    Link
    Reminds me of the infamous "lol just use FTP" Dropbox hnews thread. edit: although looking back at each, the Dropbox one has responses that are far less hostile. It does seem that hackernews had a...

    Reminds me of the infamous "lol just use FTP" Dropbox hnews thread.

    edit: although looking back at each, the Dropbox one has responses that are far less hostile. It does seem that hackernews had a shift at some point to where you can almost always predict the average stance of a post in a thread: always negative to whatever the subject is.

    2 votes
    1. raze2012
      Link Parent
      valuable point in general from that post's follow up retrospective: I heard similar factors even over Adobe and comments on "why isn't inkscape/Gimp more popular?". And while Adobe is about as...

      valuable point in general from that post's follow up retrospective:

      1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

      This type of response is so typical of an engineer and so out-of-touch. Not to pick on it, but it's just absurd, and shows zero ability to put oneself in the shoes of the layman. And yet these types of responses are all over the tech community. This disconnect is the exact reason someone like Steve Jobs is able to enter product categories very late but still blow away the competition.

      I heard similar factors even over Adobe and comments on "why isn't inkscape/Gimp more popular?". And while Adobe is about as inconvient to B2C as possible, I get it. Maybe for good reason, but many engineers don't approach UX the same way a layperson would.

      I don't necessarily want to say they are "out of touch" so much as that they have a much different idea of "efficient". e.g. terminals; mice are inefficient and imprecise, GUI's are very imperformant and error prone. Keyboards are tactile and precise and basic textual feedback is blistering fast. So giving an engineer a text box, some short commands, and extensibility for other commands can make them go miles. I'm sure some linux people who breath terminals are possibly 10x more productive than any sysadmin working through microsoft's suite of tooling and UI.

      But as always, it's easy to forget just how many laypeople are out there, so we know which one "won out" over time.

      6 votes
    2. [5]
      acdw
      Link Parent
      I honestly keep thinking I need to not read Hacker News, but I keep ... reading it. I blame not having enough to do at work.

      I honestly keep thinking I need to not read Hacker News, but I keep ... reading it. I blame not having enough to do at work.

      4 votes
      1. [2]
        joplin
        Link Parent
        I've started to going to the front page of HackerNews, opening any articles with interesting headlines in separate tabs then closing HackerNews and not reading any of the comments or logging in....

        I've started to going to the front page of HackerNews, opening any articles with interesting headlines in separate tabs then closing HackerNews and not reading any of the comments or logging in. The comments are a dumpster fire. It's a different type of dumpster fire than, say, YouTube comments are (or were - I hear they're better now?), but they're still dumpster fire. I'll grant that it's maybe a more mature dumpster fire, but that's about it.

        7 votes
        1. acdw
          Link Parent
          I do something very similar -- sometimes I'll open the comments on an article if I want to know, say, the technical merits of something I really don't know much about, but anything...

          I do something very similar -- sometimes I'll open the comments on an article if I want to know, say, the technical merits of something I really don't know much about, but anything politics-related or close I just read the piece. Good stuff gets posted to HN, but good comments generally don't, lol

          3 votes
      2. [2]
        stu2b50
        Link Parent
        There's still valuable content on hackernews. Many great creators still almost exclusively post their creations to "Show HN", and it more than any other social media gets consistent posts from...

        There's still valuable content on hackernews. Many great creators still almost exclusively post their creations to "Show HN", and it more than any other social media gets consistent posts from people in high positions (i.e you see Patrick Collison every once in a while).

        It's also an indication to me that many of the ills people attribute to Reddit from their monetization are more fundamental than a greedy company, since hackernews is and has always been a side thing for ycombinator.

        6 votes
        1. acdw
          Link Parent
          I'll give you "Show HN" - I do like those posts a lot, generally. And I agree w/ you about the Reddit monetization debunk -- Honestly I didn't think anyone attributed the shittiness to the...

          I'll give you "Show HN" - I do like those posts a lot, generally. And I agree w/ you about the Reddit monetization debunk -- Honestly I didn't think anyone attributed the shittiness to the monetizing per se, just the fomenting of stupid and terrible viewpoints, etc.

          2 votes