5 ms·

> Usually, the comments on HN/Reddit are polarised by a single group of people who have the same opinion, Can't speak for Reddit, but that's not at all the cas

> Usually, the comments on HN/Reddit are polarised by a single group of people who have the same opinion, Can't speak for Reddit, but that's not at all the case here. For example, I often speak of my hatred of microservices here. I'll get some upvotes and agreement, some people telling me it's a dumb opinion, and some people telling me we're doing it wrong and explain their right way. Believe it or not, I learn a lot from different people and their experiences. I can't think of a single topic that seems to be prevelant here that doesn't have a sizeable amount of disagreement, in fact. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

politelemon 4y ago
> but that's not at all the case here. Very sorry but it absolutely is the case here. Your anecdotal data is limited to you, but HN very much operates as a hive mind, it just hides it better. Considering this place to be "superior" to other places only leads to complacence and further strengthens the echo chamber.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- timeon 4y ago
  > HN very much operates as a hive mind Most of us here agree with you.
jrm4 4y ago
It's getting better, but e.g. try talking about race.
jonshariat 4y ago
I think your experience actually proves the point and touches on why many dangerous and crazy POV have also been getting so much air time in the news. Let's say you have 2 opposing POV: A or B "A" has a silent majority so only 5 of the 5,000 people post a comment about A being the right POV. "B" is a passionate minority so 5 of the 50 people post a comment about B being the right POV. To the viewer, it looks like a balanced discussion and a topic open to much debate, both sides have equal voice but in reality "A" is by far the most accepted position.
- jonshariat 4y ago
  It also shows up in bad news writing and science writing. For example you have 99% of scientist agreeing about global warming. You have 1% who disagree. So they write that "Some scientist disagree" and it sounds like its up for debate or maybe a significant portion know something the others don't. In the pursuit of a "Balanced" POV they tip the scales vs just reporting where the scales are at accurately.
hot_gril 4y ago
The phrase "HN/Reddit" is weird by itself. This place feels so different from Reddit.
- meowkit 4y ago
  HN is like what Reddit used to be. Heavy emphasis on news, technology. Usually some interesting debate in the comments when they were added. Found some screenshots from the early years: https://www.reddit.com/r/historyofreddit/comments/q1zks/reddit_back_on_july_1st_2005_from_kn0things_flickr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/historyofreddit/comments/q1zks/redd...
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    That's what I expected. It used to be niche.
    - webmobdev 4y ago
      It still is - it has just moved to the sub-reddit's now.
      - sgarland 4y ago
        The only niche tech subreddit I know of that's anywhere near the level of discourse on HN is r/zfs, and even then, it's mostly people asking for help because they broke their zpool; it's just that the answers are often quite detailed in their explanation. r/sysadmin is Windows-centric but isn't awful in terms of depth of knowledge. r/kubernetes is mostly blog spam and "can you troubleshoot <problem I've put zero effort into solving> for me," and r/devops is mostly "how do I get a job in devops."
- nextaccountic 4y ago
  HN culture is quite like a subreddit IMO. The only real difference is that it doesn't receive drive-by comments and upvotes from redditors browsing /r/all while not subscribed to it. This helps to curb most forms of reddit humor However; check out subreddits like /r/rust, it looks a lot like HN
grog454 4y ago
> Usually, the comments on HN/Reddit are polarised by a single group of people who have the same opinion, > polarize: divide or cause to divide into two sharply contrasting groups or sets of opinions or beliefs. > "the cultural sphere has polarized into two competing ideological positions" Hmm...
- narag 4y ago
  At school, they used to say that two don't fight if one doesn't want to. Except that was a lie. Bullies didn't get the memo, while teachers and parents were happy to repeat the lie, wash their hands and blame the victims.
eternityforest 4y ago
I don't think microservices are silent majority. They seem like more of a blogger architect who likes to tinker with stuff thing. I would expect the true silent majority just uses monoliths. If it works and doesn't make people complain every day when they work on it, why use a microservice? That's more work. Everyone likes to think of microservices as a modern high tech thing, but to me it seems like old fashioned unix stuff, that appeals to people who enjoy doing simple weekend projects, trying to make their job into a series of tiny projects of the type they might do at home for fun. The focus seems more on individual parts than on the vision of the complete project. Of course it seems to just mostly move complexity into the high level gluing it all together, and spread it out in bits of interface code, but if you are more interested in working on simple but interesting challenges, and don't mind the more hands on dev ops maintenance work, and aren't that into building complex systems, I imagine you would like it.
- powerhour 4y ago
  > but to me it seems like old fashioned unix stuff It's exactly this for me. Unix has been around longer than I've been around and will outlive my career if not my life. Components have been successfully updated and replaced mostly without significant disruption. Unix is a model for producing and maintaining complicated systems.
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  I forget the exact quote I read on HN once, but it made me laugh, all concurrent systems will eventually recreate Erlang. If you think of Microservices and even Kubernetes Clusters and company, they're all barely doing a fraction of what Erlang can do, because Erlang had the right concept, it was just 40 years ahead of its time.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    Virding's First Rule of Programming: "Any sufficiently complicated concurrent program in another language contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Erlang."
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
I have a slightly different view on microservices. They are not a technical solution but a business solution. Technically it's a fairly dumb idea ... but if every microservices is actually a tiny business function (that is some "atom" of the domain) then suddenly the business can see and manipulate and monitor and see stats in usage for each atom of its processes. Things become isibke that were hidden in giant "oh the refund section of screen four does that and bobbys team is working on that". I think Programmer Anarchy was a early adopter of microservices and as they ran a business as developers I think this may have been useful
brynjolf 4y ago
I also think HN usually come from the same background with predominantly comments from California USA or USA in general. Compare any topic relating to capatilism, the plights of the low income classes or politics in general. I often amuse myself comparing the takes between the two sites relating it those topics. Also HN is more clinical, it discussed the death of Swedish reporter like it was a cold case ready to be ripped through. And also more easily distracted by seemingly innocent open questions like in politics for example "Why is it X job to care about this?" since you can't dismiss it with a short meme it creates discussion that the OP only wanted to distract from the original article. Apart from that HN discourse is 100% better than reddit and I agree with you in some terms.

politelemon 4y ago

> but that's not at all the case here. Very sorry but it absolutely is the case here. Your anecdotal data is limited to you, but HN very much operates as a hive mind, it just hides it better. Considering this place to be "superior" to other places only leads to complacence and further strengthens the echo chamber.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
timeon 4y ago
> HN very much operates as a hive mind Most of us here agree with you.

jrm4 4y ago

It's getting better, but e.g. try talking about race.

jonshariat 4y ago

I think your experience actually proves the point and touches on why many dangerous and crazy POV have also been getting so much air time in the news. Let's say you have 2 opposing POV: A or B "A" has a silent majority so only 5 of the 5,000 people post a comment about A being the right POV. "B" is a passionate minority so 5 of the 50 people post a comment about B being the right POV. To the viewer, it looks like a balanced discussion and a topic open to much debate, both sides have equal voice but in reality "A" is by far the most accepted position.

jonshariat 4y ago
It also shows up in bad news writing and science writing. For example you have 99% of scientist agreeing about global warming. You have 1% who disagree. So they write that "Some scientist disagree" and it sounds like its up for debate or maybe a significant portion know something the others don't. In the pursuit of a "Balanced" POV they tip the scales vs just reporting where the scales are at accurately.

hot_gril 4y ago

The phrase "HN/Reddit" is weird by itself. This place feels so different from Reddit.

meowkit 4y ago
HN is like what Reddit used to be. Heavy emphasis on news, technology. Usually some interesting debate in the comments when they were added. Found some screenshots from the early years: https://www.reddit.com/r/historyofreddit/comments/q1zks/reddit_back_on_july_1st_2005_from_kn0things_flickr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/historyofreddit/comments/q1zks/redd...
- hot_gril 4y ago
  That's what I expected. It used to be niche.
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    It still is - it has just moved to the sub-reddit's now.
    - sgarland 4y ago
      The only niche tech subreddit I know of that's anywhere near the level of discourse on HN is r/zfs, and even then, it's mostly people asking for help because they broke their zpool; it's just that the answers are often quite detailed in their explanation. r/sysadmin is Windows-centric but isn't awful in terms of depth of knowledge. r/kubernetes is mostly blog spam and "can you troubleshoot <problem I've put zero effort into solving> for me," and r/devops is mostly "how do I get a job in devops."
nextaccountic 4y ago
HN culture is quite like a subreddit IMO. The only real difference is that it doesn't receive drive-by comments and upvotes from redditors browsing /r/all while not subscribed to it. This helps to curb most forms of reddit humor However; check out subreddits like /r/rust, it looks a lot like HN

grog454 4y ago

> Usually, the comments on HN/Reddit are polarised by a single group of people who have the same opinion, > polarize: divide or cause to divide into two sharply contrasting groups or sets of opinions or beliefs. > "the cultural sphere has polarized into two competing ideological positions" Hmm...

narag 4y ago
At school, they used to say that two don't fight if one doesn't want to. Except that was a lie. Bullies didn't get the memo, while teachers and parents were happy to repeat the lie, wash their hands and blame the victims.

eternityforest 4y ago

I don't think microservices are silent majority. They seem like more of a blogger architect who likes to tinker with stuff thing. I would expect the true silent majority just uses monoliths. If it works and doesn't make people complain every day when they work on it, why use a microservice? That's more work. Everyone likes to think of microservices as a modern high tech thing, but to me it seems like old fashioned unix stuff, that appeals to people who enjoy doing simple weekend projects, trying to make their job into a series of tiny projects of the type they might do at home for fun. The focus seems more on individual parts than on the vision of the complete project. Of course it seems to just mostly move complexity into the high level gluing it all together, and spread it out in bits of interface code, but if you are more interested in working on simple but interesting challenges, and don't mind the more hands on dev ops maintenance work, and aren't that into building complex systems, I imagine you would like it.

powerhour 4y ago
> but to me it seems like old fashioned unix stuff It's exactly this for me. Unix has been around longer than I've been around and will outlive my career if not my life. Components have been successfully updated and replaced mostly without significant disruption. Unix is a model for producing and maintaining complicated systems.
giancarlostoro 4y ago
I forget the exact quote I read on HN once, but it made me laugh, all concurrent systems will eventually recreate Erlang. If you think of Microservices and even Kubernetes Clusters and company, they're all barely doing a fraction of what Erlang can do, because Erlang had the right concept, it was just 40 years ahead of its time.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  Virding's First Rule of Programming: "Any sufficiently complicated concurrent program in another language contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Erlang."

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

I have a slightly different view on microservices. They are not a technical solution but a business solution. Technically it's a fairly dumb idea ... but if every microservices is actually a tiny business function (that is some "atom" of the domain) then suddenly the business can see and manipulate and monitor and see stats in usage for each atom of its processes. Things become isibke that were hidden in giant "oh the refund section of screen four does that and bobbys team is working on that". I think Programmer Anarchy was a early adopter of microservices and as they ran a business as developers I think this may have been useful

brynjolf 4y ago

I also think HN usually come from the same background with predominantly comments from California USA or USA in general. Compare any topic relating to capatilism, the plights of the low income classes or politics in general. I often amuse myself comparing the takes between the two sites relating it those topics. Also HN is more clinical, it discussed the death of Swedish reporter like it was a cold case ready to be ripped through. And also more easily distracted by seemingly innocent open questions like in politics for example "Why is it X job to care about this?" since you can't dismiss it with a short meme it creates discussion that the OP only wanted to distract from the original article. Apart from that HN discourse is 100% better than reddit and I agree with you in some terms.