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Ask HN: Where do you discuss computer related stuff now?

8 points by BiteCode_dev 3y ago

With so many twitter alternatives, the death of forums, the explosion of chats / video platforms and the reddit shenanigans, we are once again facing this decades old question. So far, only Hacker News has stood the test of time, and you cannot really discuss random topics, it's more about link sharing. "Ask HN" is not the main dish, so to speak, and the heavy curating that keeps the quality up also limit the volume of interactions by design. So where do you go when you want to geek out?

DamonHD 3y ago
Mastodon is good for various forms of geekery, eg energy, computing...
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  I am on mastodon, but the volume, quality and diversity of interactions are disappointing me. Also, there is not really a sense of community. I've yet to see mastodon related memes in my feed, nobody made me smile with some rando IT stuff after years being on it, and the discussions I had were quite short. I still have better exchanges here, on twitter or reddit. But reddit and twitter are sliding away slowly.
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    Maybe pick a different instance? Or follow a wider range of people and tags (that's a fun one) than you might elsewhere? Seems to be plently of community in mastodon for my purposes, eg in mastodon.energy. See my IDs in my profile.
    - BiteCode_dev 3y ago
      But that's the problem I think. 1% of quality posts from a giant instance will always be bigger, more diverse, and with higher chance of containing an amazing thing that 100% of whatever small instance you are on. Plus now you have to do your homework: what is it federated with? What are the rules? And what's more, the recommendation system on mastodon is very limited, so you are basically stuck with what's trending for everyone or your subscribe list. Maybe you have a good instance to recommend for programming?
      - DamonHD 3y ago
        I am following people from a bunch of instances which includes FOSS and other programming stuff. My instance seems to be having a "fail whale" moment so I can't give you any examples easily at this moment! Feel free to prod me on the IDs in my bio and I'll pass some on.
thejosh 3y ago
Work Slack channels now (we even have a mechanical keyboards channel!!), random YouTube video comment sections from level1techs/level1linux :)?
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  A lot of various sub silos are popping everywhere. They have the advantage of the niches, but also the disadvantage of being all isolated.
  - thejosh 3y ago
    The one thing that killed the enthusiasm of Reddit for me was when they started killing old.reddit.com and the loading of comments. It's a shame, as Reddit is an absolute goldmine for esoteric information about random topics (my headphones were having a weird crackling noise, turns out someone figured out why and posted a random comment on Reddit which fixed my issue), only followed up by random gist.github.com links :).
disadvantage 3y ago
Looking into Lemmy. Signed up on a few instances. It's not exactly a Reddit Killer App but it works for now. Not that much engagement on my posts since people are only testing the waters with it.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  Well, 37.8K users, even when fully engaged, are not going to do much. If you take a single subreddit, such as /r/Python, is has by itself 1,137,771 users. It's easy to take for granted how massive the flow of interactions from twitter, facebook, insta and reddit are.
jstx1 3y ago
Reddit and HN. Signed up for a bunch of Discord channels but it never clicked for me - it’s super chaotic and at the same time it feels like you’re speaking into the void with nobody interesting to talk to.
zzo38computer 3y ago
Some things I will discuss on Usenet, some on IRC, and some on here (although it is not always as good as the others, there are often more messages, and some of them are good), and sometimes a few others.
mabynogy 3y ago
I'm hanging with other programmers at #dailyprog. It's a channel on irc.rizon.net (https://dailyprog.org/members/ https://dailyprog.org/members/).
overvale 3y ago
Hacker News. I think too much attention is paid to the front page. Sure, it is my main source of great links, but all the good discussions I've had are on not very popular posts. Try exploring these: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists