I don't think that's the consensus at all. I don't think there is a consensus, honestly. The only people who would say such a thing are the same overenthusiasti

I don't think that's the consensus at all. I don't think there is a consensus, honestly. The only people who would say such a thing are the same overenthusiastic (bless them, but still) CS undergrads and/or aspiring social media climbers who also post about how self-driving cars are already a solved problem that will be universal by 2020, or that we'll reach the singularity by 2035, or that Linux will inevitably devour Windows on consumer desktop PCs by 2005, or that by the 1960s every large first-world city will have a single skyscraper-sized computer with resources shared by all residents via teletypes in every home. Futurism is an extremely useful exercise as long as it's treated as a thought experiment based on current trends rather than actual prognostication. The median HN post is probably wiser or better informed than the median post to Slashdot or /r/programming or whatever, but at the end of the day it's still an Internet forum for anonymous tech enthusiasts, with all of the potential for bias and tunnel vision that that implies. You still have to wade through mountains of garbage to find gems of insight, there's just sometimes a little less garbage and a little more insight here than elsewhere. I don't say that to cast shade on HN, rather I think accomplishing something like "a little less garbage than proggit" is a freaking miracle and that's why I read HN every day.