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There’s a subtle irony about HN. It’s a site that gathers people together to post & comment on all the newest tech while at the same time HN itself is host on

There’s a subtle irony about HN. It’s a site that gathers people together to post & comment on all the newest tech while at the same time HN itself is host on some of the most basic and boring tech - a flat file based forum.

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Boring tech is reliable tech.
- dt3ft 5y ago
  This is why mainframe will probably never die.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Mainframes are actually the opposite of boring relative to a standard desktop. Boring jobs? Yes, but IBM have some extremely talented people working on them.
  - threeseed 5y ago
    Mainframes are only reliable because companies stopped making changes to them. It's just too hard to find experienced talent to add new features let along troubleshoot complex issues. I work for a large bank and one thing is for sure that everyone wants to move away from mainframes but it's just such a perilous journey.
- threeseed 5y ago
  No it's not. Oracle, Windows, C etc are very much older, boring technologies. And more modern variants are far more reliable.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
sph 5y ago
Seasoned engineers go for simple and effective tech. You can find a good amount of those on here. A few might browse the site from lynx or Emacs. The other "fancy" tech forum full of new tech and slow as molasses (Reddit) is mostly frequented by the younger, more inexperienced generation of hackers.
- krapp 5y ago
  No, the only reason HN uses flat files is that the forum is a MVP for Arc Lisp, and pg just wanted to implement everything in Arc. Seasoned engineers understand the drawbacks and benefits of different forms of technology and choose the right tool for the job rather than simply assuming the simplest solution is always the best. I'm not insulting HN here but it is what it is, one person's side project that took off. Also, Reddit is able to handle millions of users and over a million subreddits while Hacker News nearly collapses if a single thread gets too much traffic. Comparing the two and deciding Reddit was built by less experienced developers with inferior, poorly thought out technology is just ridiculous.
  - sph 5y ago
    I get more issues with Reddit breaking that HN, and of course the first one has more users, but also brings much more revenue and has more SRE than HN has. HN is remarkably stable for its size.
    - threeseed 5y ago
      HN is one of the simplest and inherently scalable web apps you can get. Of course it's stable.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - krapp 5y ago
        HN is neither simple nor inherently scalable. Dang recently asked people to log out so he could manually deal with a thread whose traffic was slowing down the entire site[0,1]. As a framework HN has fundamental architectural flaws and scalability has always been one of them. That would never happen even on a small forum with a relational database and proper load balancing/caching etc (in other words, with all that "fancy" modern stuff HN often considers unnecessary.) [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?shownew&id=31026659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?shownew&id=31026659 [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31027882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31027882
rozenmd 5y ago
I don't see the irony, use Boring Technology if you want to build something that lasts.
elenaferrantes 5y ago
It’s focusing on content. It’ not crippled with auto-playing or multimedia crap. It does not make my browser window flashy and gaudy
_ph_ 5y ago
And I am so happy that HN is as simple as it is. Makes browsing it so pleaseant in general. The only feature I am missing for large discusions: a way of tracking which part of the discussion I already have read. Revisiting a large discussion sometimes later currently means a lot of duplicate reading. Otherwise I prefer the web format of HN a lot against all other similar forums.
willis936 5y ago
https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905 https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905
pessimizer 5y ago
> HN itself is host on some of the most basic and boring tech It's written in a homemade lisp. That's not boring, that's fun.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Well, they did specify hosting. Maybe they meant boring from the perspective of big hardware or the latest massively scalable cloud tech.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

Boring tech is reliable tech.

dt3ft 5y ago
This is why mainframe will probably never die.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Mainframes are actually the opposite of boring relative to a standard desktop. Boring jobs? Yes, but IBM have some extremely talented people working on them.
- threeseed 5y ago
  Mainframes are only reliable because companies stopped making changes to them. It's just too hard to find experienced talent to add new features let along troubleshoot complex issues. I work for a large bank and one thing is for sure that everyone wants to move away from mainframes but it's just such a perilous journey.
threeseed 5y ago
No it's not. Oracle, Windows, C etc are very much older, boring technologies. And more modern variants are far more reliable.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

sph 5y ago

Seasoned engineers go for simple and effective tech. You can find a good amount of those on here. A few might browse the site from lynx or Emacs. The other "fancy" tech forum full of new tech and slow as molasses (Reddit) is mostly frequented by the younger, more inexperienced generation of hackers.

krapp 5y ago
No, the only reason HN uses flat files is that the forum is a MVP for Arc Lisp, and pg just wanted to implement everything in Arc. Seasoned engineers understand the drawbacks and benefits of different forms of technology and choose the right tool for the job rather than simply assuming the simplest solution is always the best. I'm not insulting HN here but it is what it is, one person's side project that took off. Also, Reddit is able to handle millions of users and over a million subreddits while Hacker News nearly collapses if a single thread gets too much traffic. Comparing the two and deciding Reddit was built by less experienced developers with inferior, poorly thought out technology is just ridiculous.
- sph 5y ago
  I get more issues with Reddit breaking that HN, and of course the first one has more users, but also brings much more revenue and has more SRE than HN has. HN is remarkably stable for its size.
  - threeseed 5y ago
    HN is one of the simplest and inherently scalable web apps you can get. Of course it's stable.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - krapp 5y ago
      HN is neither simple nor inherently scalable. Dang recently asked people to log out so he could manually deal with a thread whose traffic was slowing down the entire site[0,1]. As a framework HN has fundamental architectural flaws and scalability has always been one of them. That would never happen even on a small forum with a relational database and proper load balancing/caching etc (in other words, with all that "fancy" modern stuff HN often considers unnecessary.) [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?shownew&id=31026659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?shownew&id=31026659 [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31027882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31027882

rozenmd 5y ago

I don't see the irony, use Boring Technology if you want to build something that lasts.

elenaferrantes 5y ago

It’s focusing on content. It’ not crippled with auto-playing or multimedia crap. It does not make my browser window flashy and gaudy

_ph_ 5y ago

And I am so happy that HN is as simple as it is. Makes browsing it so pleaseant in general. The only feature I am missing for large discusions: a way of tracking which part of the discussion I already have read. Revisiting a large discussion sometimes later currently means a lot of duplicate reading. Otherwise I prefer the web format of HN a lot against all other similar forums.

willis936 5y ago

https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905 https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905

pessimizer 5y ago

> HN itself is host on some of the most basic and boring tech It's written in a homemade lisp. That's not boring, that's fun.

ineedasername 5y ago
Well, they did specify hosting. Maybe they meant boring from the perspective of big hardware or the latest massively scalable cloud tech.