4 ms·

This is one of those articles that is self-promotion disguised as a "lesson" of some sort, and it gets upvoted by loads of people who then want to engage in the

This is one of those articles that is self-promotion disguised as a "lesson" of some sort, and it gets upvoted by loads of people who then want to engage in their own self-promotion. "Oh yes, this is true..my experiencing with my book [link]"... Tech/software dev books make extremely little money. The #1 reason people write such books -- knowing that they're unlikely to see much more than a coffee or two of proceeds -- is for reputation/career development. Getting a book "published", even through actual publishing houses, is the easiest part of the process: Agile printing and the absence of editorial standards makes it a close to riskless process for them.

mjd 6y ago
I hope that someday you discover that people sometimes do things for reasons other than “self-promotion”.
- hn_check 6y ago
  Quaint. Maybe you can write a blog post detailing how idealized of a human being you are, teaching us that self-promotion is a myth? Offer it to publishers and get amazed when everyone will `publish' anything, showing how truly remarkable you are. Self-promotion is the vehicle that drives a good percentage of HN content. And that's okay and is just a reality of life as we all claw and scramble for our place in the hierarchy. But far too often it has dishonest packaging, with hilarious lead-ins like "people often ask me" (no they don't) and wrapping some self-aggrandizing prattle as if it's instructive for others. It gets called out on most other venues. HN is a particularly gullible, complicit crowd (loads of low level developers who desperately want to feel like they're in the big boy club, wearing big boy pants) so it plays well here. Day after day. It's pretty shameless.
- hn_check 6y ago
  The fact that my other comment -- which is completely true, btw -- was flagged while the insipid, patronizing comment above isn't: Beautiful, classic Hacker News. I'd never leave this place, though. Where else am I going to read AGW denial or see hilariously tenuous attempts at defending whatever insipid thing the POTUS said recently. This place has more far-right anti-science imbeciles than InfoWars. When HN puts its collective genius together and repeatedly gives their take on SARS-CoV-2, it truly is a sight to see. I mean, it's ignorant nonsense by a bunch of over-confident clowns who think that the accomplishment of throwing a shitty webpage together makes them a Great Thinker. It's stupid as hell, but also incredibly funny. Just earlier today some fans asked me, "hn_check, being so handsome and so gloriously smart, not to mention so well hung, how do you tolerate such antics?" It isn't easy to answer, though I received sight-unseen contracts from six major publishers to tell my tale. I'm above that, though. Truly, a selfless, zero-self-promotion genius.
  - johnr2 6y ago
    > Truly, a selfless, zero-self-promotion genius. Impressive bot. I wonder who programmed it.
dorfsmay 6y ago
Adding a personal connection to the topic is true of almost all HN threads. Most of the time I find it interesting and read through the comments, but sometimes it irritates me as I'm only interested in the topic itself, in which case I skip the comments but am thankful the article made the front page.

mjd 6y ago

I hope that someday you discover that people sometimes do things for reasons other than “self-promotion”.

hn_check 6y ago
Quaint. Maybe you can write a blog post detailing how idealized of a human being you are, teaching us that self-promotion is a myth? Offer it to publishers and get amazed when everyone will `publish' anything, showing how truly remarkable you are. Self-promotion is the vehicle that drives a good percentage of HN content. And that's okay and is just a reality of life as we all claw and scramble for our place in the hierarchy. But far too often it has dishonest packaging, with hilarious lead-ins like "people often ask me" (no they don't) and wrapping some self-aggrandizing prattle as if it's instructive for others. It gets called out on most other venues. HN is a particularly gullible, complicit crowd (loads of low level developers who desperately want to feel like they're in the big boy club, wearing big boy pants) so it plays well here. Day after day. It's pretty shameless.
hn_check 6y ago
The fact that my other comment -- which is completely true, btw -- was flagged while the insipid, patronizing comment above isn't: Beautiful, classic Hacker News. I'd never leave this place, though. Where else am I going to read AGW denial or see hilariously tenuous attempts at defending whatever insipid thing the POTUS said recently. This place has more far-right anti-science imbeciles than InfoWars. When HN puts its collective genius together and repeatedly gives their take on SARS-CoV-2, it truly is a sight to see. I mean, it's ignorant nonsense by a bunch of over-confident clowns who think that the accomplishment of throwing a shitty webpage together makes them a Great Thinker. It's stupid as hell, but also incredibly funny. Just earlier today some fans asked me, "hn_check, being so handsome and so gloriously smart, not to mention so well hung, how do you tolerate such antics?" It isn't easy to answer, though I received sight-unseen contracts from six major publishers to tell my tale. I'm above that, though. Truly, a selfless, zero-self-promotion genius.
- johnr2 6y ago
  > Truly, a selfless, zero-self-promotion genius. Impressive bot. I wonder who programmed it.

dorfsmay 6y ago

Adding a personal connection to the topic is true of almost all HN threads. Most of the time I find it interesting and read through the comments, but sometimes it irritates me as I'm only interested in the topic itself, in which case I skip the comments but am thankful the article made the front page.