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I'd be surprised if there are more than a handful, but I often wonder the same thing about posts about systems programming and, well, basically anything that me

by laingc 10y ago

I'd be surprised if there are more than a handful, but I often wonder the same thing about posts about systems programming and, well, basically anything that mentions Rust in the title. For my own part, I find this kind of post fairly easy to digest, but that's almost certainly because I'm a Mathematician by training (PhD in numerical differential geometry, but did a lot of abstract algebra as an undergraduate). To me, a lot of the programming-related topics on HN seem to be written in some form of Ancient Greek, but they seem to be pretty popular and attract a lot of comments. I think we have to simply assume that there are minorities of niche experts on HN, and that these minorities are large enough for such posts to do well.

casion 10y ago
I see. I'm coming from the other side. I do microcontroller and embedded development. This post is basically Ancient Greek to me, as you put it. I think I largely became curious since "these types of posts" tend to be highly ranked with relatively few comments, yet they still show up frequently. I'm also surrounded by a large number of varying types of programmers and engineers, and I get to hear evangelizing and discussion of a wide array of technologies, but pure math type stuff like this never comes up. So combined that with the aforementioned observation and I become increasingly curious how these posts do well.
- laingc 10y ago
  It's worth mentioning that I come to HN explicitly searching for a mix of interesting reading in my field(s) and Ancient Greek. I think it's super important for me as a mathematician working in technology to try and understand what clever people in other fields find interesting and important. I don't understand it in any sort of depth, and I don't expect myself to. I would imagine that a lot of folks from "your side" probably have a similar attitude to mathematics.

by laingc 10y ago

casion 10y ago

I see. I'm coming from the other side. I do microcontroller and embedded development. This post is basically Ancient Greek to me, as you put it. I think I largely became curious since "these types of posts" tend to be highly ranked with relatively few comments, yet they still show up frequently. I'm also surrounded by a large number of varying types of programmers and engineers, and I get to hear evangelizing and discussion of a wide array of technologies, but pure math type stuff like this never comes up. So combined that with the aforementioned observation and I become increasingly curious how these posts do well.

laingc 10y ago
It's worth mentioning that I come to HN explicitly searching for a mix of interesting reading in my field(s) and Ancient Greek. I think it's super important for me as a mathematician working in technology to try and understand what clever people in other fields find interesting and important. I don't understand it in any sort of depth, and I don't expect myself to. I would imagine that a lot of folks from "your side" probably have a similar attitude to mathematics.