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>It's worth noting that "hacker news" was probably never meant in the sense of "excellent programmer", but rather in the sense being criticized by the article:

• yellowapple 11y ago
  The matter of whose history is "revisionist" depends on perspective, and it's really hard to say whether your or my perspective here is the right one. That said, painting my notation as revisionist appears to be inaccurate. > YCombinator was started in 2005. The "Hacker News" was started in 2007.[1] The audience it intended to serve was the type of "hackers" mentioned in the 2001 essay. Are you sure about that? Plenty of large companies have worked to build cultures around their products. Should we really trust YCombinator's motives more than, say, Apple's when they build a product that claims to be geared toward makers while gradually pulling said makers into a particular ecosystem? In other words, just because YCombinator / Paul Graham claim Hacker News to be geared toward technical-loving programmers and tinkerers v. VC-backed (or prospective VC-backed) entrepreneurs doesn't mean that neither of them are lying to us or themselves. > PG also later uses "hacker" in the sense of a tech nerd who would rather focus on a startup rather instead of being discontent working at a corporate job. That happens to describe a lot of people who wouldn't be classified as "hackers", or even future ones in their larval stage. It also happens to describe many (if not most) startup founders of the variety being criticized in the article. > One can look at Internet Archive Wayback Machine[2] and see that the front page was dominated by topics unrelated to "chasing the money". There were a lot of technical topics, yes, but "dominated by topics unrelated to 'chasing the money'" seems to be false, seeing that the top result has a plug for a startup called "ThriveSmart" and is basically how why some startup uses Rails, result #4 is Betteridge's-Law-invoking clickbait rhetorically implying that VC-backed startups should for some reason be ashamed of themselves for not towing to puritannical sensibilities regarding pornographic content (though, to be fair, Paul Graham did post in that article's comment section calling it out on said puritannical and rather hypocritical bullshit), result #7 is about having dinner with YC folks and being acquired by Conde Nast, result #8 is about Caterpillar making money through "Web 2.0", result #16 is a WSJ piece praising the open-office concept and disparaging cubicles "because it's what Silicon Valley does, and therefore deserves attention for some reason", result #29 is some blog post about entrepreneur burnout, and result #30 is a rather-uncritical NYT piece on advertising strategies of large businesses. I haven't even gotten to the second page yet. And yet you cite this as proof that my viewpoint is revisionist somehow. Yeah, there were quite a few awesome technical articles back then, but even back then the Valleyesque distortion cuts through the purported hacker-centric focus of HN. This isn't to say that Paul Graham wasn't or isn't an excellent hacker, nor is it to say that his own definition of hacker back in 2001 was somehow incorrect or out-of-line with the proper (and admittedly nebulous/vague) definition, and nor is it to say that he or YCombinator had motives out-of-alignment with the purported target audience. Rather, it's to suggest that maybe - just maybe - folks around here are taking the "hacker" part of "hacker news" too strongly at face value when its YC heritage ought to be warranting at least a small grain of salt, and that a lot may very well have changed in six years.
  • jasode 11y ago
    >Are you sure about that? Plenty of large companies have worked to build cultures around their products. Should we really trust YCombinator's motives more than, say, It's fine to be vigilant about subliminal marketing or secret motives (hailcorporate![1]) but I think in this case, HN is transparent in its goals. If HN is brainwashing us to redefine "hacker" to suit their needs, what is their end game? HN doesn't have ads. They don't have constant popups nagging us to pay for a subscription. They do have periodic "YC Random Company is hiring" posts (if you consider those "ads"). But they also have the weekly hiring posts from non-YC companies. There are the weekly posts about "basic income" and "minimum wage should be $15" and "programmers should form a union" that routinely make the front page. Those are not topics the money men like to push. Any time a "Uber taxi" thread is posted, the top comments always complain about the "sharing-economy" being a VC-funded scam on society. Lastly, the vast majority of readers will never submit an application to YC so that link is also mostly irrelevant. In other words, if HN is tricking us with a redefinition of "hacker" to suit their nefarious agenda, what have they gained and what did readers lose? >It also happens to describe many (if not most) startup founders of the variety being criticized in the article. Your interpretation of the article is incorrect. The article explains[2] how some startup entrepreneurs with counter-culture tendencies, rebellious attitudes, and subversive agendas can be neutered of their free spirit and be put into the service of entities with money (VCs, Barclay's so-called "hackathon", etc) -- the "yuppies". The article is criticizing the "yuppies" and not the startup entrepreneurs that might enjoy articles currently on HN front page such as "Reversing NvAPI to Programmatically Overclock Nvidia GPUs" and "Go and Rust – objects without class (2013)" >the top result has a plug for a startup called "ThriveSmart" and is basically how why some startup uses Rails I guess one can see whatever they want to see. To me, that article is a Rails article, and the secondary trivia is that the company happens to be ThriveSmart. If that article was written anonymously with no company mentioned, one of the HN commenters would inevitably ask, "where do you work?" and the company name would be revealed in the comments. People try languages, frameworks, databases, and they also tend to work at companies. The company is part of the color of the presentation. If we got manipulated by ThriveSmart exposure 8 years ago, I don't see evidence of it. The other articles on the front page are topics hackers voted up. It doesn't mean every article is a programming article about Lisp or MongoDB. >- just maybe - folks around here are taking the "hacker" part of "hacker news" too strongly at face value when its YC heritage ought to be warranting at least a small grain of salt, and that a lot may very well have changed in six years. To proof to me is what types of articles show up on the front page. HN's audience is not all uber-Lisp clones of PG but the intended audience is definitely not the "yuppies" that the article is criticizing. I can't see how anyone can look at the HN front page as a whole and conclude it is designed for "yuppies" instead of "hackers". [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate [2]I believe there are so many misinterpretations of his thesis because he writes in a very convoluted style but here's an example excerpt of author's criticism of yuppies: "We are currently witnessing the gentrification of hacker culture. The countercultural trickster has been pressed into the service of the preppy tech entrepreneur class. It began innocently, no doubt. The association of the hacker ethic with startups might have started with an authentic counter-cultural impulse on the part of outsider nerds tinkering away on websites. But, like all gentrification, the influx into the scene of successive waves of ever less disaffected individuals results in a growing emphasis on the unthreatening elements of hacking over the subversive ones."