6 ms·

Why won't HN offer dark mode?

by wyclif 6y ago

skissane 6y ago
I think it is a matter of development time/resources. One issue is that HN is not really open source. Although there was an open source release years ago, the current code base is an evolution of that and closed. It then comes down to how much time/money Y Combinator is willing to invest in enhancing it, and I assume more essential stuff takes priority over nice-to-haves like dark mode. I think, ideally, the current version could be open sourced, and then people could contribute PRs to add stuff like dark mode. I think dang has said before that the reason why they don't do that, is they don't want to expose certain "secret sauce" (abuse/spam detection, voting code, etc), since if the algorithms were exposed people would exploit them. I guess one solution would be to split the code base into open core and closed plugins, open source the core and then keep the secret sauce in the closed plugins. But, I guess that would take time to carry out that refactoring, which comes back to the issue of limited development time/resources and what priorities that will be spent on.
- tester34 6y ago
  Imma be kinda snarky here SV VCs struggle with once per long time peroid 500 HTML LoC page layout change?
  - tomcam 6y ago
    You sound pretty accomplished. I bet you could write a Hacker News clone in a weekend. I bet you could even attract an audience the same size in, what, a year or two? I’ll check back after this weekend and see how you’re doing.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    It's not that they struggle. HN's layout itself does a lot of work shaping the community here, so they understandably want to be careful about changing things.
neilpanchal 6y ago
As @dang said, I admire the HN philosophy - “Move slowly and preserve things.” There is no need for a dark mode. Just use a style extension. We are all tech savvy people here.
chmaynard 6y ago
Dan, Re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 It's been four months since you agreed that dark mode for HN is a good idea. Any progress? If not, what is blocking you? Can I help? Craig -- We just don't have much dev time. Sorry for the delay. We'll get there. I appreciate the offer of help but we're not currently set up to accept contributions that way... Dan

Why won't HN offer dark mode?

by wyclif 6y ago

Why won't HN offer dark mode?

I think it is a matter of development time/resources. One issue is that HN is not really open source. Although there was an open source release years ago, the current code base is an evolution of that and closed. It then comes down to how much time/money Y Combinator is willing to invest in enhancing it, and I assume more essential stuff takes priority over nice-to-haves like dark mode. I think, ideally, the current version could be open sourced, and then people could contribute PRs to add stuff like dark mode. I think dang has said before that the reason why they don't do that, is they don't want to expose certain "secret sauce" (abuse/spam detection, voting code, etc), since if the algorithms were exposed people would exploit them. I guess one solution would be to split the code base into open core and closed plugins, open source the core and then keep the secret sauce in the closed plugins. But, I guess that would take time to carry out that refactoring, which comes back to the issue of limited development time/resources and what priorities that will be spent on.

tester34 6y ago
Imma be kinda snarky here SV VCs struggle with once per long time peroid 500 HTML LoC page layout change?
- tomcam 6y ago
  You sound pretty accomplished. I bet you could write a Hacker News clone in a weekend. I bet you could even attract an audience the same size in, what, a year or two? I’ll check back after this weekend and see how you’re doing.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It's not that they struggle. HN's layout itself does a lot of work shaping the community here, so they understandably want to be careful about changing things.

neilpanchal 6y ago

As @dang said, I admire the HN philosophy - “Move slowly and preserve things.” There is no need for a dark mode. Just use a style extension. We are all tech savvy people here.

chmaynard 6y ago

Dan, Re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 It's been four months since you agreed that dark mode for HN is a good idea. Any progress? If not, what is blocking you? Can I help? Craig -- We just don't have much dev time. Sorry for the delay. We'll get there. I appreciate the offer of help but we're not currently set up to accept contributions that way... Dan