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I want to take a moment to reflect on what a great community HN has. It never ceases to amaze me. The link is from the CS department at the University of North
by wyattk 9y ago
I want to take a moment to reflect on what a great community HN has. It never ceases to amaze me.
The link is from the CS department at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, IA. It sounds obscure, but that's my hometown. I grew up a couple blocks away from it. I sat in on classes there. I even know the author's family. That's small town Iowa, for ya.
I never thought I would see anything related to that on here. This is truly a place for all.
- jjuel 9y agoIt is always cool to see UNI and Cedar Falls on HN. Also from CF and got my MIS degree at UNI.
- Roodgorf 9y agoDr. Wallingford's blog is one of the few that I make sure to never miss an entry of, it's definitely cool to see him get some recognition on here.
- lobf 9y ago> References middle-class suburban Iowa > This is truly a place for all. Edit- sorry I reminded you guys that there are other life experiences again.
- RingwormOne 9y agoSmall town Iowa is probably not very well represented on most internet forums, so the commenter was happy to see that it was being referenced... That's all. Not sure where your negativity is coming from
- lobf 9y agoWhite middle class suburbanites aren't well represented on internet forums? Don't mean to be negative, it's just insane how insular and specific this community is and how little recognition that is given here.
- weberc2 9y agoCedar Falls isn't a suburb. 2 hours to Des Moines, 3 to Minneapolis, 5 to Chicago.
- lobf 9y agoI take it to mean any place that isn't urban but also isn't rural.
- weberc2 9y agoIt's pretty close to rural. 40K citizens and corn fields a mile or so from campus. Not sure what your overarching point is though--what's wrong with remarking on the improbability of a submission from a tiny university in Iowa?
- lobf 9y agoI grew up in a town of 6k and we were the big one in 20 miles. 40k is suburban IMO. Edit- and I was ridiculing the idea that the mention of a wealthy, homogenous suburb indicates how inclusive this community is. Pretty much every story here deals with things from a young, white, wealthy perspective.
- weberc2 9y agoTo be clear, no one argued that "posts from Iowa" == "inclusive"; you're arguing against a straw man. But more importantly, it seems your beef with HN is based on the assumption that everyone from a town of 40k or more has the same experiences. This is such a distorted idea of "diversity" when you consider that it includes people from major metropolitan areas, silicon valley, red states, blue states, and all over Europe (and yes, all of those groups are well-represented on HN). The fact that you're here from a town of 6K and I'm here from a town of 2K is testament to the OP's point, and it contradicts yours.
- RingwormOne 9y agoI'd imagine life experience for people living in small town Iowa is very different from that of people living in major urban centers on the coasts. You're assuming that if someone is white and not rich or below the poverty line that their life experience is equivalent to that of other white not rich/not poor people. That's a false assumption. Diversity should be celebrated regardless of whether it's within or between different races. The OP was just celebrating a bit of diversity that they noticed and was relevant to them. They were not diminishing other forms of diversity that you may be more concerned with for whatever reason.
- 1701d 9y agoDr. Wallingford was my advisor at UNI. Pleasant surprise to see his blog here!
- weberc2 9y agoI went to UNI for CS as well. Dr. Wallingford was dept head at the time.
- ham_burgers 9y agoI work in the fast food industry, don't code, and I'm not even particularly interested in tech, but spend hours reading the articles and comments here.
- arthur_pryor 9y agothat's definitely the sort of thing i like about this place. i'd imagine programmers are very very heavily represented here, but it's nice that it's not to the exclusion of everyone else.
- m3kw9 9y agoMaybe you should start coding, you may actually like it too
- swyx 9y agoserious question, if you arent interested in tech, what interests you about the articles and comments?
- a3n 9y agoThere's a lot of interesting articles here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22how%20is%20this%20hn%22&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22how%20is%20this%20hn%22&sor...
- netten 9y agoI was a network engineer and would do the same, can't place the exact reason why, but today i am a python programmer doing network automation. I do think HN had a major part to play in this change
- Art9681 9y agoNetwork Engineer here too. I learned to code with Python and now do full-time PowerShell automation at work. It completely changed my career. Best decision I ever made.
- 9y ago
- karmelapple 9y agoAnother (former) Iowan here - fully agree how great it is that so many different places are represented here. I ran a few meetups while in Iowa, and one of the common themes myself and the other organizers tried to help everyone feel is that these days, location really is less important than ever before. It may help to know people face to face in the Bay Area or other major metropolitan for some opportunities, but now is the best time ever to find people with technological interests in your neighborhood, even if you’re not in a tech hub. In fact, all the better if you’re not in a tech hub - you can become a local subject matter expert more easily in a growing community.
- weberc2 9y agoI left Cedar Falls precisely because I became the subject matter expert within a couple years of graduating--there simply weren't many people to learn from. There were people around me who were experienced in lots of other related areas which were rapidly declining in importance and frankly didn't excite me. Besides, it was really hard to find people who were as interested in learning as I was--I was mostly viewed with suspicion because I didn't put in the bare minimum and go home, and I quickly realized that wasn't the sort of team I wanted to work on. Further, there weren't any companies in the area that were doing exciting things, probably due to a dearth of talent in the area (not to knock on rural folks; assuming the distribution of talent is the same in rural areas as urban areas, the hiring pool is much larger in an area where people are more densely populated, and this is ignoring multipliers like the draw of talent to large cities and the improved rate of learning when your talent pool has improved access to other smart people). I guess this is to say how you view this depends on whether you interested in being a local subject matter expert or a global subject matter expert.
- andythreads 9y agoThe internet startup[1] I work at is based out of Cedar Falls. Our product team is in Minneapolis (including myself), but the CEO/sales is in CF. I'm down there all the time! I've actually grown to like it quite a bit. Cool little town. http://www.threadsculture.com/ http://www.threadsculture.com/
- weberc2 9y agoHa! I have direct connections to half of the logos in your "case studies" page. Small world.