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it's amazing from a historical perspective that there are HNers around now who don't know who DHH is, when he was such a prevailing voice in the HN scene back i
by arnorhs 1mo ago
it's amazing from a historical perspective that there are HNers around now who don't know who DHH is, when he was such a prevailing voice in the HN scene back in the day.
He is the author of rails and there are so many founders who were inspired by 37 signals and their takes on things back in the day.
The golden years of HN.
- pjmlp 1mo agoWould have rails taken off if he was equally open about his politics back then?
- cpursley 1mo agoYes, people were more mentally resilient and mature then and it was pre Reddit, which has completely broken and warped many people’s minds.
- pjmlp 1mo agoAs Gen X, I think they were already softies back then.
- noir_lord 1mo agoIt's impossible to know what his politics was back then in fairness. People's politics do often (but not always) change as they age.
- CuriouslyC 1mo ago10 years ago Joe Rogan was basically a stereotypical Bernie bro.
- thesuitonym 1mo ago10 years ago Joe Rogan was a well known douchebag far-right conspiracy theorist, what are you talking about?
- CuriouslyC 1mo agoNot a Joe fan but his arc started at socially liberal/economically libertarian.
- magarnicle 1mo agoI'm guessing that GP needs to update their mental timeline of how far back 10 years ago was.
- mylidlpony 1mo agoWell, there were some tells... [0] [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/basecamp-didnt-just-ban-politics-at-work-its-an-executive-power-grab/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/basecamp-didnt-just-ban-poli...
- JeremyNT 1mo agoI have trouble imagining it. The early rails community was very welcoming at the time. The things he now openly states were simply not welcome in most polite society at the time. I'm not sure DHH really held the same views back then, either. The "Overton Window" has moved over the last 20 years so openly bigoted and racist views are accepted in the discourse now.
- pjmlp 1mo agoIn Portugal we have a saying, April never more, exactly because the outcome of such ideas should not be forgotten.
- emsign 1mo agoMarc Andreessen helped establish the modern web browser, he has always been an Ayn Rand fan for example. But politics wasn't that important back then, I guess? And I just think there simply were not a lot of opportunities to gain some political and financial capital from voicing their fringe believes for people like them back in the day. They were busy building systems and software, now they are busy building or changing political systems.
- OkayPhysicist 1mo agoLibertarian views have always been relatively commonplace in the tech scene. Being a fan of Ayn Rand probably put you in the majority, but left-libertarian views were commonplace, too. Calling for ethnic cleansing is not a libertarian belief. It is a fascist belief. "Privately owned roads are a good idea" and "Let's round up all the gypsies" are not equivalently debatable ideas.
- aikinai 1mo agoIt started in the early 2000s. Politics hadn't shifted left enough to make him right-wing back then.