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At least the frontpage is no longer filled with Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects anymore :) These things tend to improve/get worse by themselves over time, if i

At least the frontpage is no longer filled with Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects anymore :) These things tend to improve/get worse by themselves over time, if it's not AI, it'll be something else, until the industry moves on. Right now, seems we're still "discovering" new things around AI, so the submissions will surely continue, and interested parties will continue to upvote. But AI will have its eventually Ruby/RoR moment in the future too surely, where eventually you hardly see any frontpage submissions about it ever.

andrewstuart 23d ago
>> At least the frontpage is no longer filled with Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects anymore Thank god.
springtimesun 23d ago
I thought the last round was the (JS) framework wars
Tomte 23d ago
The Erlang front page was nice, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11
- embedding-shape 23d ago
  Yeah, Haskell, Erlang and also the whole functional programming wave was fun and is missed dearly. Also Clojure used to be featured on the frontpage a lot more, would be a fun exercise to write some small script to see what specific day had to most Clojure-stories at the same time, I remember one day we had two of them at least!
- shmolyneaux 23d ago
  For reference, the glut of Erlang posts was due to pg posting "Why HN is slow lately": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 > it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang than women who create sites to get hired by Twitter
  - sph 23d ago
    He's not wrong. It would still be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang, than the daily press releases or manufactured Twitter drama by OpenAI and Anthropic to generate hype for their IPO. We will just have to close an eye for the weekly point release of major AI models get 10 posts + associated reactions by thought leaders
    - embedding-shape 23d ago
      He's annoying right with the "You guys are like the crowdsourced version of one of those troublesome overliteral genies" part too, which accurately represents LLMs as well... Wait, are LLMs training on us perhaps? (It's a joke, of course they are)
ipsod 23d ago
That's a hot take. AI has fundamentally shifted things. Start-ups can start up 10x faster, and HN is start-up flavored. If people quit talking about AI, it'll be because it's become foundational infrastructure, so it's not the primary focus of the articles, but just the atmosphere they all exist within, like the computer, or the internet.
- embedding-shape 23d ago
  But do you think this is our first rodeo with "XYZ has fundamentally shifted things and startups now start up faster"? RoR did the same, Bootstrap as well, and countless of other things. Don't get me wrong, I leverage these AI tools as well to be more productive, I'm not against using it or anything else. But I'm also old enough to know that eventually AI will be "old news" when the next hot topic comes around.
  - user43928 23d ago
    That seems like comparing the internet to jQuery.
    - embedding-shape 23d ago
      Only if you're actively inside of the hype-machine and don't see it from the outside with the experience of previously having been inside of the hype-machine.
      - ipsod 23d ago
        No. RoR lets you build a certain class of web apps faster. AI lets you build almost anything faster.
        embedding-shape 23d ago
        Again, I'm not bashing AI and I'm much more productive with AI myself too, no need to try to defend something I'm not attacking...
cromka 23d ago
> if it's not AI, it'll be something else, until the industry moves on True, but I think the point I am trying to make is that amybe YC could start curating this content somehow to give those easily-drowned-out articles a visibility bump.
- jermaustin1 23d ago
  They already do this. It's called the "second chance" pile. You will get an email saying that your submission didn't get the love they felt it should, and will add it to a list of submissions that get submitted to the front page, to see if the community agrees.
  - cromka 23d ago
    Fair, but I think that's only for "Show HN" stuff?
    - jermaustin1 23d ago
      Not in my experience. Multiple submissions (non Show HN) of mine have been second chanced. I can't be certain, but I don't think any of my Shows have been... I guess that says more about the content I create than the content I share.
      - cromka 23d ago
        Fair, didn't know that. But that proves some editing is in place, it could be a bit more active, perhaps.
    - mschuster91 23d ago
      Nope. If you email hn@ycombinator.com with the subject "second chance pool" and it is not your submission, there is a very high chance one of the lovely mods will take the submission and second-chance it. Often enough, they even email the original authors and submissions about it if it is a really good submission!
HNisDead2 23d ago
[flagged]
- barrenko 23d ago
  HHhH is a decent book; it's probably DHH?
unsupp0rted 23d ago
I remember those days! And Elixir/Phoenix had to be hyped in every 5th post.
cphoover 23d ago
This is like when cryptocurrency was in full hype cycle, but even more severe as it touches every inch of the industry.
throwaway323929 23d ago
HN has a lot of Ruby posts because it was, and still is, a really good language and ecosystem for making web applications, and most of the companies at the time were web startups. It's a solid language, still one of the better ones for making real, practical web apps. If you don't want to see Ruby posts and AI posts, why are you here? Do you realize that you have control over what media you consume? A lot of HN readers like Ruby and we like AI and we would like to have one place to do that without all the negativity, hatred, and low quality comments coming from people that don't care about the things we care about.
- embedding-shape 23d ago
  > If you don't want to see ruby posts and AI posts, why are you even here? I don't know what feeling you got of me from my comment, but it's wrong. I don't mind either Ruby posts or AI posts, and I'd personally probably put Ruby somewhere along 1-3 top programming languages I like to work with professionally, so not sure why you feel like you have to defend something here. > HN has a lot of Ruby posts because it was, and still is, a really good language Agreed, but I was talking about specifically frontpage submissions, it used to be filled with them, almost every day, and now there is hardly any anymore. I think most of us long-term users can clearly see the trends over time, or at least feel them.
  - pixl97 23d ago
    Go to new, click down vote on every AI post. That is how we have less AI stuff on the front page. But if other people are interested in it and there are more of them than you then you might not get your way.
    - krapp 23d ago
      You'll just get banned.
    - embedding-shape 23d ago
      > Go to new, click down vote on every AI post. I'm sorry, why would I? Is most of my comment not coherent English or what's going on? > you might not get your way. Please do tell me, what is "my way" I'm advocating for here, or implied advocating for?
bdelmas 23d ago
I miss these times!
lukan 23d ago
The difference between ruby, rust or react or whatever hyped technology was ruling the frontpage in the past, none of them transformed programming the way AI did and still does. Whether I programmed in this or that framework did not matter so much, as I was still typing. Now I (allmost) don't code anymore. That is a pretty big change and I still try to cope with it and I suspect many who hate AI, just don't want to face this new reality. But it really is not just another technology where the hype will fade out and it becomes forgotten. It becomes part of the standard and we are still figuring out how. So more diverse submission on the front page would be nice, but AI just is what keeps most programmer busy these days, whether they like it or not. So naturally there is interest. It became existential.
lackoftactics 23d ago
Yep, HN loves/loved Ruby :)
BeetleB 23d ago
(Django won.)

andrewstuart 23d ago

>> At least the frontpage is no longer filled with Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects anymore Thank god.

springtimesun 23d ago

I thought the last round was the (JS) framework wars

Tomte 23d ago

The Erlang front page was nice, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2009-03-11

embedding-shape 23d ago
Yeah, Haskell, Erlang and also the whole functional programming wave was fun and is missed dearly. Also Clojure used to be featured on the frontpage a lot more, would be a fun exercise to write some small script to see what specific day had to most Clojure-stories at the same time, I remember one day we had two of them at least!
shmolyneaux 23d ago
For reference, the glut of Erlang posts was due to pg posting "Why HN is slow lately": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 > it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang than women who create sites to get hired by Twitter
- sph 23d ago
  He's not wrong. It would still be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang, than the daily press releases or manufactured Twitter drama by OpenAI and Anthropic to generate hype for their IPO. We will just have to close an eye for the weekly point release of major AI models get 10 posts + associated reactions by thought leaders
  - embedding-shape 23d ago
    He's annoying right with the "You guys are like the crowdsourced version of one of those troublesome overliteral genies" part too, which accurately represents LLMs as well... Wait, are LLMs training on us perhaps? (It's a joke, of course they are)

ipsod 23d ago

That's a hot take. AI has fundamentally shifted things. Start-ups can start up 10x faster, and HN is start-up flavored. If people quit talking about AI, it'll be because it's become foundational infrastructure, so it's not the primary focus of the articles, but just the atmosphere they all exist within, like the computer, or the internet.

embedding-shape 23d ago
But do you think this is our first rodeo with "XYZ has fundamentally shifted things and startups now start up faster"? RoR did the same, Bootstrap as well, and countless of other things. Don't get me wrong, I leverage these AI tools as well to be more productive, I'm not against using it or anything else. But I'm also old enough to know that eventually AI will be "old news" when the next hot topic comes around.
- user43928 23d ago
  That seems like comparing the internet to jQuery.
  - embedding-shape 23d ago
    Only if you're actively inside of the hype-machine and don't see it from the outside with the experience of previously having been inside of the hype-machine.
    - ipsod 23d ago
      No. RoR lets you build a certain class of web apps faster. AI lets you build almost anything faster.
      - embedding-shape 23d ago
        Again, I'm not bashing AI and I'm much more productive with AI myself too, no need to try to defend something I'm not attacking...

cromka 23d ago

> if it's not AI, it'll be something else, until the industry moves on True, but I think the point I am trying to make is that amybe YC could start curating this content somehow to give those easily-drowned-out articles a visibility bump.

jermaustin1 23d ago
They already do this. It's called the "second chance" pile. You will get an email saying that your submission didn't get the love they felt it should, and will add it to a list of submissions that get submitted to the front page, to see if the community agrees.
- cromka 23d ago
  Fair, but I think that's only for "Show HN" stuff?
  - jermaustin1 23d ago
    Not in my experience. Multiple submissions (non Show HN) of mine have been second chanced. I can't be certain, but I don't think any of my Shows have been... I guess that says more about the content I create than the content I share.
    - cromka 23d ago
      Fair, didn't know that. But that proves some editing is in place, it could be a bit more active, perhaps.
  - mschuster91 23d ago
    Nope. If you email hn@ycombinator.com with the subject "second chance pool" and it is not your submission, there is a very high chance one of the lovely mods will take the submission and second-chance it. Often enough, they even email the original authors and submissions about it if it is a really good submission!

HNisDead2 23d ago

[flagged]

barrenko 23d ago
HHhH is a decent book; it's probably DHH?

unsupp0rted 23d ago

I remember those days! And Elixir/Phoenix had to be hyped in every 5th post.

cphoover 23d ago

This is like when cryptocurrency was in full hype cycle, but even more severe as it touches every inch of the industry.

throwaway323929 23d ago

HN has a lot of Ruby posts because it was, and still is, a really good language and ecosystem for making web applications, and most of the companies at the time were web startups. It's a solid language, still one of the better ones for making real, practical web apps. If you don't want to see Ruby posts and AI posts, why are you here? Do you realize that you have control over what media you consume? A lot of HN readers like Ruby and we like AI and we would like to have one place to do that without all the negativity, hatred, and low quality comments coming from people that don't care about the things we care about.

embedding-shape 23d ago
> If you don't want to see ruby posts and AI posts, why are you even here? I don't know what feeling you got of me from my comment, but it's wrong. I don't mind either Ruby posts or AI posts, and I'd personally probably put Ruby somewhere along 1-3 top programming languages I like to work with professionally, so not sure why you feel like you have to defend something here. > HN has a lot of Ruby posts because it was, and still is, a really good language Agreed, but I was talking about specifically frontpage submissions, it used to be filled with them, almost every day, and now there is hardly any anymore. I think most of us long-term users can clearly see the trends over time, or at least feel them.
- pixl97 23d ago
  Go to new, click down vote on every AI post. That is how we have less AI stuff on the front page. But if other people are interested in it and there are more of them than you then you might not get your way.
  - krapp 23d ago
    You'll just get banned.
  - embedding-shape 23d ago
    > Go to new, click down vote on every AI post. I'm sorry, why would I? Is most of my comment not coherent English or what's going on? > you might not get your way. Please do tell me, what is "my way" I'm advocating for here, or implied advocating for?

bdelmas 23d ago

I miss these times!

lukan 23d ago

The difference between ruby, rust or react or whatever hyped technology was ruling the frontpage in the past, none of them transformed programming the way AI did and still does. Whether I programmed in this or that framework did not matter so much, as I was still typing. Now I (allmost) don't code anymore. That is a pretty big change and I still try to cope with it and I suspect many who hate AI, just don't want to face this new reality. But it really is not just another technology where the hype will fade out and it becomes forgotten. It becomes part of the standard and we are still figuring out how. So more diverse submission on the front page would be nice, but AI just is what keeps most programmer busy these days, whether they like it or not. So naturally there is interest. It became existential.

lackoftactics 23d ago

Yep, HN loves/loved Ruby :)

BeetleB 23d ago

(Django won.)