7 ms·

HN is not actually good at programming and CS, either.

bunderbunder 3y ago
No large, well-known open discussion venue is really very good at discussing any topic. I'm not sure it's even possible for one to be. As the saying goes, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Because it is filled with all kinds. Junior devs arguing over some pedantic point, and senior devs trying to explain the forest and the trees. Birds are objects, bees are functions. For a thousand niche subjects in CompSi, there are 0-100 levels of knowledge. The discourse can be great, and can also go off the rails.
  - Scarblac 3y ago
    And people post short comments that take strong positions in such a way that it's really hard to decide whether it's a complete beginner bluffing or an expert talking from a wealth of experience.
7thaccount 3y ago
I'm not aware of any better place for people to chat about programming languages including esoteric stuff like APL where someone actively developing the main commercial offering and another writing an open source alternative are actively contributing to the conversation and explaining how low level operations work. I've seen plenty of experts here on stuff like Prolog, Lisp, Forth, Smalltalk (Alan Kay has posted on here), tons on Java, Python, R, C++, Julia...it goes on and on.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- recursive 3y ago
  lambda the ultimate
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    For convenience: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
- dartos 3y ago
  There are a surprising amount of that on various discord servers. I chat about esoteric languages on the Godot engine discord server once in a while.
  - xvector 3y ago
    Right, but that's very specific, and frankly Discord makes terrible public forums. HN excels as a general purpose forum for technical discussions relating to computer science.
    - krapp 3y ago
      The quality of actual technical discussion on HN is not much better on average than any programming or technical subreddit in my experience, if they are well moderated. It shouldn't be surprising that the most technically adept people here also tend to post the least often. The biggest difference is HN is strongly anti-humor, primarily because of the weird pathology the culture here has about Reddit and appearing "mainstream." But the lack of memes here doesn't make the rest of the content better, rather it tends to result in aggression, knee-jerk contrarianism and overconfident assertions in ignorance becoming low effort virtue signals instead.
    - dartos 3y ago
      HN is just barebones. I don’t think there’s anything about it that specifically makes it better than anything else other than tech articles float to the top.
  - digging 3y ago
    > There are a surprising amount of that on various discord servers. I'm never surprised anymore by how much productive discussion is entombed in Discord servers, just sad. Servers are hidden from the public, not web-searchable, barely searchable internally, horrible threading, notification hell, proprietary software, zero data ownership - it could hardly be a worse public discussion forum if it tried. Which makes sense because it was designed to be something else. Sigh... got a link to any of these servers that have better discussion than HN?
- baz00 3y ago
  I think the point is the signal to noise ratio is poor. But it's less bad than everywhere else I find.
nsonha 3y ago
so what is better?
huytersd 3y ago
That’s just a low effort Reddit trope. Name one place that has better discussion on a broad range of programming topics.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  My work Teams channel
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Broad means more than just your Scala backend and neo4j db.
godelski 3y ago
HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  > HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either One problem is Hacker News are terrible at recognizing dry humor. 90% of readers interpret tongue-in-cheek posts as face-value. And among those who recognize the humor, 77% want an accompanying "/s" flag iff (day-of-week mod 13 == -2).
  - godelski 3y ago
    This made me laugh haha. I get pushback when I say "If something is too ridiculous, assume it is a joke." Because people are insistent that there are people who really believe dumb shit. They're not wrong, but if they are sincere, why treat them as anything but a joke? It's not like you're going to convincingly correct them when they make such grave errors. So why not a joke? What's the old saying? I'd rather laugh than cry.

No large, well-known open discussion venue is really very good at discussing any topic. I'm not sure it's even possible for one to be. As the saying goes, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Because it is filled with all kinds. Junior devs arguing over some pedantic point, and senior devs trying to explain the forest and the trees. Birds are objects, bees are functions. For a thousand niche subjects in CompSi, there are 0-100 levels of knowledge. The discourse can be great, and can also go off the rails.
- Scarblac 3y ago
  And people post short comments that take strong positions in such a way that it's really hard to decide whether it's a complete beginner bluffing or an expert talking from a wealth of experience.

7thaccount 3y ago

I'm not aware of any better place for people to chat about programming languages including esoteric stuff like APL where someone actively developing the main commercial offering and another writing an open source alternative are actively contributing to the conversation and explaining how low level operations work. I've seen plenty of experts here on stuff like Prolog, Lisp, Forth, Smalltalk (Alan Kay has posted on here), tons on Java, Python, R, C++, Julia...it goes on and on.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
recursive 3y ago
lambda the ultimate
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  For convenience: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
dartos 3y ago
There are a surprising amount of that on various discord servers. I chat about esoteric languages on the Godot engine discord server once in a while.
- xvector 3y ago
  Right, but that's very specific, and frankly Discord makes terrible public forums. HN excels as a general purpose forum for technical discussions relating to computer science.
  - krapp 3y ago
    The quality of actual technical discussion on HN is not much better on average than any programming or technical subreddit in my experience, if they are well moderated. It shouldn't be surprising that the most technically adept people here also tend to post the least often. The biggest difference is HN is strongly anti-humor, primarily because of the weird pathology the culture here has about Reddit and appearing "mainstream." But the lack of memes here doesn't make the rest of the content better, rather it tends to result in aggression, knee-jerk contrarianism and overconfident assertions in ignorance becoming low effort virtue signals instead.
  - dartos 3y ago
    HN is just barebones. I don’t think there’s anything about it that specifically makes it better than anything else other than tech articles float to the top.
- digging 3y ago
  > There are a surprising amount of that on various discord servers. I'm never surprised anymore by how much productive discussion is entombed in Discord servers, just sad. Servers are hidden from the public, not web-searchable, barely searchable internally, horrible threading, notification hell, proprietary software, zero data ownership - it could hardly be a worse public discussion forum if it tried. Which makes sense because it was designed to be something else. Sigh... got a link to any of these servers that have better discussion than HN?
baz00 3y ago
I think the point is the signal to noise ratio is poor. But it's less bad than everywhere else I find.

nsonha 3y ago

so what is better?

huytersd 3y ago

That’s just a low effort Reddit trope. Name one place that has better discussion on a broad range of programming topics.

mrguyorama 3y ago
My work Teams channel
- huytersd 3y ago
  Broad means more than just your Scala backend and neo4j db.

godelski 3y ago

HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either

CoastalCoder 3y ago
> HN is not actually good at self deprecating jokes, either One problem is Hacker News are terrible at recognizing dry humor. 90% of readers interpret tongue-in-cheek posts as face-value. And among those who recognize the humor, 77% want an accompanying "/s" flag iff (day-of-week mod 13 == -2).
- godelski 3y ago
  This made me laugh haha. I get pushback when I say "If something is too ridiculous, assume it is a joke." Because people are insistent that there are people who really believe dumb shit. They're not wrong, but if they are sincere, why treat them as anything but a joke? It's not like you're going to convincingly correct them when they make such grave errors. So why not a joke? What's the old saying? I'd rather laugh than cry.