3 ms·

Is there any internal data on where students are going instead?

Ronsenshi 5mo ago
Perhaps some interest-related Discord servers. Tragically, Discord is just another locked down silo without publicly accessible front on the web.
DaSHacka 5mo ago
You honestly don't wanna know If my peers are any indication, a whole lot of TikTok, Reels, Twitter, Discord, and other such mind-numbing platforms. The types of platforms I would consider 'substantive' (or, at least, more substantive than those platforms) are definitely on the way out. The few times friends have seen me browsing Hacker News or a certain Mongolian basket weaving form, the first thing they comment on is how confusing the interface is, and how old the site looks. I truly don't understand the mentality, but if your site doesn't take three seconds to buffer a simple text drop down menu, and have JavaScript elements load in mid-scroll that bump elements around the page making you just barely miss that button you were trying to click, then your site is seen as 'inferior' or 'sketchy'. Perhaps I've just had a bad sample, but I've experienced a variety of different environments by this point, and by and large, I've seen more people in my generation act in that manner than not.
- dang 5mo ago
  This is actually reassuring. We don't need all your peers! We just need you and whatever smart cohort you're bonded with. It's true that HN looks old - it looked old before you were born, probably - but (a) I have no idea how to change it, and (b) HN is a long bet on plain text. If the smartest young people lose interest in reading, I'm ok with HN dying for that reason. I just don't want it to die for any cheaper reason.
  - gsquaredxc 5mo ago
    I would like to offer some additional reassurance: I send my friends articles I see on HN that might interest them. A (in my view) very good litmus test is when someone asks where I saw it, because this demonstrates some desire for continual learning. I find that anyone that asks that question seemingly trusts an interface like HN more because of it. My suspicion is that this is probably because at a certain point you see stuff like Agner Fog's work, LWN, or a number of other minimalist websites and realize that a website that is popular despite the lack of overindulgence in UI must be popular because of the content. It doesn't hurt that the best courses in my university experience have had websites that have not changed much since the late 1990s (one did change the lime green text on turquoise background on their page after the recession to a color scheme that didn't cause headaches in students). I do find that my peers that now read HN used to be judicial about curating a Reddit feed and mostly otherwise limited on other sources. Short-form content is addictive and as nearly as unavoidable as sugar, but many of my brighter peers work on reducing that intake. Long-form YouTube is also something I find to be a marker of someone who is seeking knowledge. Many of my peers do scroll Twitter and TikTok all day, but I find that those who are easiest to chat with are those who have already scrolled HN today and want to discuss a particular article they know I would have seen. I've had conversations that start with "Did you see that TikTok?" and conversations that start with "Did you see that article on HN?" and the latter is always more engaging.
    - dang 5mo ago
      You succeeded in reassuring me further—thanks! This little subthread turned interesting, though it's teeming with sample bias of course. > Long-form YouTube is also something Yes, we hear that often too. I didn't mention it above because it's not text, but in terms of how people spend time and where they go to learn things, it's a huge alternative. I wonder sometimes how HN might interface with the videoverse. I can't imagine having video on the site but I can imagine making videos based on HN threads or articles that have appeared here. I just can't imagine me making them!
      - altairprime 5mo ago
        Long-form YouTube is much more text than may be apparent on the surface. Discussions with hundreds or thousands of comments and with the same wide-ranging falloff curve of HN in how interesting those comments are (and, too, HN’s tendency to bubble up trite one-liners and me-toos due to sharing the integers-only voting system weaknesses).
- tailscaler2026 5mo ago
  Discord is just chat, I wouldn't call it mind-numbing, reminds me perfectly of IRC from a utility perspective. That said, it's a commercial closed-source single point of failure.
- Kiro 5mo ago
  How is Discord mind-numbing?
  - DaSHacka 5mo ago
    The massive discord servers have a culture that is no different than any other social media
dang 5mo ago
Not much, but I do ask the youngest founders what their friends read if they don't read HN, and the only consistent answer I hear is Twitter. (and btw, they do say "twitter")
- AuthAuth 5mo ago
  Many of my sisters friends do everything entirely via tiktok. They look at what trends are popular and they target that fully on platform. This is for stuff like building niche targeted apps, selling beauty products/clothing brands, restaurants.

Perhaps some interest-related Discord servers. Tragically, Discord is just another locked down silo without publicly accessible front on the web.

DaSHacka 5mo ago

You honestly don't wanna know If my peers are any indication, a whole lot of TikTok, Reels, Twitter, Discord, and other such mind-numbing platforms. The types of platforms I would consider 'substantive' (or, at least, more substantive than those platforms) are definitely on the way out. The few times friends have seen me browsing Hacker News or a certain Mongolian basket weaving form, the first thing they comment on is how confusing the interface is, and how old the site looks. I truly don't understand the mentality, but if your site doesn't take three seconds to buffer a simple text drop down menu, and have JavaScript elements load in mid-scroll that bump elements around the page making you just barely miss that button you were trying to click, then your site is seen as 'inferior' or 'sketchy'. Perhaps I've just had a bad sample, but I've experienced a variety of different environments by this point, and by and large, I've seen more people in my generation act in that manner than not.

dang 5mo ago
This is actually reassuring. We don't need all your peers! We just need you and whatever smart cohort you're bonded with. It's true that HN looks old - it looked old before you were born, probably - but (a) I have no idea how to change it, and (b) HN is a long bet on plain text. If the smartest young people lose interest in reading, I'm ok with HN dying for that reason. I just don't want it to die for any cheaper reason.
- gsquaredxc 5mo ago
  I would like to offer some additional reassurance: I send my friends articles I see on HN that might interest them. A (in my view) very good litmus test is when someone asks where I saw it, because this demonstrates some desire for continual learning. I find that anyone that asks that question seemingly trusts an interface like HN more because of it. My suspicion is that this is probably because at a certain point you see stuff like Agner Fog's work, LWN, or a number of other minimalist websites and realize that a website that is popular despite the lack of overindulgence in UI must be popular because of the content. It doesn't hurt that the best courses in my university experience have had websites that have not changed much since the late 1990s (one did change the lime green text on turquoise background on their page after the recession to a color scheme that didn't cause headaches in students). I do find that my peers that now read HN used to be judicial about curating a Reddit feed and mostly otherwise limited on other sources. Short-form content is addictive and as nearly as unavoidable as sugar, but many of my brighter peers work on reducing that intake. Long-form YouTube is also something I find to be a marker of someone who is seeking knowledge. Many of my peers do scroll Twitter and TikTok all day, but I find that those who are easiest to chat with are those who have already scrolled HN today and want to discuss a particular article they know I would have seen. I've had conversations that start with "Did you see that TikTok?" and conversations that start with "Did you see that article on HN?" and the latter is always more engaging.
  - dang 5mo ago
    You succeeded in reassuring me further—thanks! This little subthread turned interesting, though it's teeming with sample bias of course. > Long-form YouTube is also something Yes, we hear that often too. I didn't mention it above because it's not text, but in terms of how people spend time and where they go to learn things, it's a huge alternative. I wonder sometimes how HN might interface with the videoverse. I can't imagine having video on the site but I can imagine making videos based on HN threads or articles that have appeared here. I just can't imagine me making them!
    - altairprime 5mo ago
      Long-form YouTube is much more text than may be apparent on the surface. Discussions with hundreds or thousands of comments and with the same wide-ranging falloff curve of HN in how interesting those comments are (and, too, HN’s tendency to bubble up trite one-liners and me-toos due to sharing the integers-only voting system weaknesses).
tailscaler2026 5mo ago
Discord is just chat, I wouldn't call it mind-numbing, reminds me perfectly of IRC from a utility perspective. That said, it's a commercial closed-source single point of failure.
Kiro 5mo ago
How is Discord mind-numbing?
- DaSHacka 5mo ago
  The massive discord servers have a culture that is no different than any other social media

dang 5mo ago

Not much, but I do ask the youngest founders what their friends read if they don't read HN, and the only consistent answer I hear is Twitter. (and btw, they do say "twitter")

AuthAuth 5mo ago
Many of my sisters friends do everything entirely via tiktok. They look at what trends are popular and they target that fully on platform. This is for stuff like building niche targeted apps, selling beauty products/clothing brands, restaurants.