Like most others, I'd step in and say Lobste.rs has fantastic submissions but quite thin in conversation compared to Hacker News, even in highly technical subje

Like most others, I'd step in and say Lobste.rs has fantastic submissions but quite thin in conversation compared to Hacker News, even in highly technical subjects. I suspect that's because you need to ask someone for an invite right now. Maybe they'd be better off just letting your HN account be enough social proof. Or maybe they're happy at that size, how am I to say otherwise? It's hit and miss, but reddit is kinda nice in that you can subscribe to pretty narrowly focused, well moderated subreddits. I'm only familiar with the case of r/java. You actually get a really weird mix of really low and incredibly high quality posts and discussion. Half of what you get is what I assume are beginner programmers coming out of school or early junior programmers while the other half are \big names\ in Java-land. Like people who work on, design, build and decide what goes into Java 10, 11, 12 etc. I know I'm biased and a bit of an HN snob about it, but that odd mix is part of why I never became a redditor or frequent the technical landscape there.