4 ms·

> HN's primary audience is "hackers" Who told you that?? HN's primary audience is startup people, it was even called startup news in the beginning. It certainl

by 4ad 10y ago

> HN's primary audience is "hackers" Who told you that?? HN's primary audience is startup people, it was even called startup news in the beginning. It certainly has nothing to do with hackers (for any definition of hacker). HN exists to support YC, that's all.

johnfn 10y ago
> It certainly has nothing to do with hackers This seems a rather extreme assertion about a website named Hacker News.
- DanBC 10y ago
  ...and where the first line of the guidelines says "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting."
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombinator.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombi... ^ Per the parent you're replying to, it used to be called Startup News.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnfn 10y ago
    Right, and it's called hacker news now, so I don't understand how that is relevant?
mi100hael 10y ago
> It certainly has nothing to do with hackers (for any definition of hacker). Please, tell me more about the true definition of a hacker and why this site would be of no interest to them.
dang 10y ago
> Who told you that The first of the site guidelines of course: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to understand what HN is you need to understand Paul Graham. pg is a hacker, programming language designer, startup founder/investor, and voracious polymath—so all the factors people are mentioning in this thread were there from the beginning. HN's function was to furnish pg (and anyone with similar tastes) with interesting things to read. This principle—intellectual curiosity, just like the guidelines say—has always been the main driver of HN. HN is at its most valuable to YC simply by being as interesting as possible. That idea is counterintuitive to some, but to people like pg and the early HN community it's as obvious as water. Happily, YC is still run by people who know that the best way to optimize HN for business value is not to.

by 4ad 10y ago

johnfn 10y ago

> It certainly has nothing to do with hackers This seems a rather extreme assertion about a website named Hacker News.

DanBC 10y ago
...and where the first line of the guidelines says "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting."
ddebernardy 10y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombinator.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombi... ^ Per the parent you're replying to, it used to be called Startup News.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- johnfn 10y ago
  Right, and it's called hacker news now, so I don't understand how that is relevant?

mi100hael 10y ago

> It certainly has nothing to do with hackers (for any definition of hacker). Please, tell me more about the true definition of a hacker and why this site would be of no interest to them.

dang 10y ago

> Who told you that The first of the site guidelines of course: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to understand what HN is you need to understand Paul Graham. pg is a hacker, programming language designer, startup founder/investor, and voracious polymath—so all the factors people are mentioning in this thread were there from the beginning. HN's function was to furnish pg (and anyone with similar tastes) with interesting things to read. This principle—intellectual curiosity, just like the guidelines say—has always been the main driver of HN. HN is at its most valuable to YC simply by being as interesting as possible. That idea is counterintuitive to some, but to people like pg and the early HN community it's as obvious as water. Happily, YC is still run by people who know that the best way to optimize HN for business value is not to.