5 ms·

Sure, but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts and what are you really gaining from reading all of those "new technology of the month" pos

Sure, but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts and what are you really gaining from reading all of those "new technology of the month" postings?

plasma 13y ago
Awareness. I'm development lead on my startup and just being aware of new tech, other startups, problems with frameworks, algorithms,... all help me be better informed for my job.
- johnmurray_io 13y ago
  Exactly. Even a better reason to read curated content. You need to get awareness with what's going on in the tech community without sinking massive amounts of time. Do you really need to know about some lisp-variant someone implemented in 20 lines of Ruby.
  - kenbellows 13y ago
    This implies that the average reader is diving into every article. If my job (or interests or sideproject or...) happens to be Ruby or Lisp related, perhaps that's a useful article. Personally, I rarely-if-ever use either, so I tend to skip those. And that's really the point. Sure, reading (or even skimming) every last article is a waste of time, but I don't think most of us do; we jump to the stuff that interests us. At least I do. And if I'm reading only curated lists, all I get is what interests someone else. There's some overlap, but I'll end up mentally filtering by title anyway, and there's a good chance I'll miss quite a bit that would be of real interest and value to me.
  - idProQuo 13y ago
    HN doesn't have that much content, I never feel overwhelmed. The front-page turnover rate is really slow, to the point that I pretty quickly get my "fix" and then leave. Over the course of a day I might sink an hour into it, 2 if there's something interesting going on. However, I usually read maybe 3 articles per day at most. >Do you really need to know about some lisp-variant someone implemented in 20 lines of Ruby. I find the recent "tiny JS app" craze to be kind of cool. It's neat that a language can be so expressive that you can throw together something so complicated in under a kilobyte. I guess I don't need that kind of stuff, but it usually ends with me learning something new and wastes 5 minutes of my day at most.
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    I agree. But the problem is quality of curation. Another problem, and maybe one can call it FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is that sometimes the best knowledge is deep inside the comments. They may or may not be there but you have to filter all the babble.
- rodolphoarruda 13y ago
  Works the same way for me, a project manager. I dont want to know ghe finest details of everything that hits the front pahe here, I just want to know theif names, what they do, where their value are at and who is using it. Reading comments is also interesting when there are conflicting opinions on the topic.
- kabisote 13y ago
  Yes, awareness. I was reading 2+ hours a day of HN at my previous work. I was still more productive than most of my co-workers and was able to introduce useful tools, solutions and practices. One of my fellow developers asked, "How do you find out about all these stuff?" So yeah, how do we find out about all these stuff otherwise?
  - johnmurray_io 13y ago
    If you read my article, then you'd know how. Curated content. It gives you the best of both worlds. Being able to dig through less news to find "good" content while still keeping up with today's news. With the added bonus that you can choose your content (wide categories / general tech or specific communities like Android, or HTML5). Curated content still gives you what you want, but with less work. Additionally, you're reading will be consolidated (in theory) into a larger block of time on a less frequent basis, freeing up more time throughout your week.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
This can be rephrased as, "What's the value to you of posting on HN?" The value to tptacek can be denominated in units of "hundreds of thousands of dollars," for example. I have to run -- I wish I could go into more detail with this comment. I'd talk about some other non-monetary benefits, like the ability to seek out a network, or to get feedback on weaknesses, or a bunch of other things.
acjohnson55 13y ago
Less time being a mindless drone, never leaving your lane? ;) I personally have learned quite a bit on HN that has led me to being a better programmer. A discovered Two Scoops of Django (https://django.2scoops.org/ https://django.2scoops.org/), Javascript Allongé (https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge), and plenty of other things that have expanded my mind. The debate between promises, callbacks, and generators made me think critically about how I do asynchronous JS. The local love of functional programming has inspired me to dive in, and ultimately made me a better imperative programmer as well. And overhype of Edward Snowden's every movement aside, HN does a great job of surfacing stories about the intersection of policy and tech. I also value a lot of the discourse that happens here. I think HN, even with its flaws, is a better community for discussion than Slashdot, Ars, or most of the rest of the sites covering tech.
- tedks 13y ago
  I think everything you've said in your comment is correct, but when did the alternatives become "be a mindless drone" and "be a mindless drone who reads hacker news?"
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    My point is to criticize the implied argument that keeping your nose down working on the problems in front of you is inherently more productive than spending some time on HN to trying to gain some wider perspective. That's probably a strawman attack, but the first line of my comment wasn't meant to be taken so literally, which I tried to signal with the emoticon.
    - tedks 13y ago
      I generally agree that gaining a wider perspective is valuable, but it's not clear that HN is the best way to do that, and the OP outlines a number of reasons which make sense to me why it would be a bad way to do that. At the least, HN exists in a thickly-walled bubble. There's not a very wide perspective here.
- 13y ago
thebrokencube 13y ago
Why not just for amusement? Or to just see what interesting things people have come up with? Why does everything have to be "only towards this goal", what happened to just doing things just for curiosity's sake?
larrys 13y ago
"but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts" Agree that the downside always has to be taken into account. One thing that I have noticed over time is that at least some successful people tend to be highly focused and less interested in the types of things that, as they say on HN are "anything that piques one's curiosity". I'm amazed at how little curiosity they have actually. What you are describing (that I think some people are missing here) is that sometimes you read things on HN, you then fork, and then you are going down the next shiny ball of opportunity because it is so much fun to do. And so easy to do. Only a click away. So it's rationalized in a way like "well what could be bad about learning learning is always valuable!!" without taking into account the opportunity cost of all that learning. The key is as you say "less" and limits. There have been things over the past that I have forked to that have paid off in actual results and money. And things that have not. By devoting a set amount of time to satisfy curiosity you can gain much. But like with anything else you have to make sure you aren't shortchanging something else that is more important.
fhd2 13y ago
> Sure, but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts No idea, I just do it for leisure. And frankly, I hardly read any TFAs posted to HN. I first read the headlines, if something seems interesting, I skip to the comments. If I still think it's interesting, I might skim TFA. I'm not trying to be time efficient or anything, that's just how I enjoy using HN. > what are you really gaining from reading all of those "new technology of the month" postings? I basically never read posts about new stuff, unless the title says it's from someone I respect. If something shows up repeatedly, I might get interested and Google it, maybe even skim that article about it. All in all, I think I'm using HN a bit like Twitter: Lots of noise, with a little bit of signal in it I might want to follow up on.

Sure, but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts and what are you really gaining from reading all of those "new technology of the month" postings?

plasma 13y ago

Awareness. I'm development lead on my startup and just being aware of new tech, other startups, problems with frameworks, algorithms,... all help me be better informed for my job.

johnmurray_io 13y ago
Exactly. Even a better reason to read curated content. You need to get awareness with what's going on in the tech community without sinking massive amounts of time. Do you really need to know about some lisp-variant someone implemented in 20 lines of Ruby.
- kenbellows 13y ago
  This implies that the average reader is diving into every article. If my job (or interests or sideproject or...) happens to be Ruby or Lisp related, perhaps that's a useful article. Personally, I rarely-if-ever use either, so I tend to skip those. And that's really the point. Sure, reading (or even skimming) every last article is a waste of time, but I don't think most of us do; we jump to the stuff that interests us. At least I do. And if I'm reading only curated lists, all I get is what interests someone else. There's some overlap, but I'll end up mentally filtering by title anyway, and there's a good chance I'll miss quite a bit that would be of real interest and value to me.
- idProQuo 13y ago
  HN doesn't have that much content, I never feel overwhelmed. The front-page turnover rate is really slow, to the point that I pretty quickly get my "fix" and then leave. Over the course of a day I might sink an hour into it, 2 if there's something interesting going on. However, I usually read maybe 3 articles per day at most. >Do you really need to know about some lisp-variant someone implemented in 20 lines of Ruby. I find the recent "tiny JS app" craze to be kind of cool. It's neat that a language can be so expressive that you can throw together something so complicated in under a kilobyte. I guess I don't need that kind of stuff, but it usually ends with me learning something new and wastes 5 minutes of my day at most.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  I agree. But the problem is quality of curation. Another problem, and maybe one can call it FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is that sometimes the best knowledge is deep inside the comments. They may or may not be there but you have to filter all the babble.
rodolphoarruda 13y ago
Works the same way for me, a project manager. I dont want to know ghe finest details of everything that hits the front pahe here, I just want to know theif names, what they do, where their value are at and who is using it. Reading comments is also interesting when there are conflicting opinions on the topic.
kabisote 13y ago
Yes, awareness. I was reading 2+ hours a day of HN at my previous work. I was still more productive than most of my co-workers and was able to introduce useful tools, solutions and practices. One of my fellow developers asked, "How do you find out about all these stuff?" So yeah, how do we find out about all these stuff otherwise?
- johnmurray_io 13y ago
  If you read my article, then you'd know how. Curated content. It gives you the best of both worlds. Being able to dig through less news to find "good" content while still keeping up with today's news. With the added bonus that you can choose your content (wide categories / general tech or specific communities like Android, or HTML5). Curated content still gives you what you want, but with less work. Additionally, you're reading will be consolidated (in theory) into a larger block of time on a less frequent basis, freeing up more time throughout your week.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

This can be rephrased as, "What's the value to you of posting on HN?" The value to tptacek can be denominated in units of "hundreds of thousands of dollars," for example. I have to run -- I wish I could go into more detail with this comment. I'd talk about some other non-monetary benefits, like the ability to seek out a network, or to get feedback on weaknesses, or a bunch of other things.

acjohnson55 13y ago

Less time being a mindless drone, never leaving your lane? ;) I personally have learned quite a bit on HN that has led me to being a better programmer. A discovered Two Scoops of Django (https://django.2scoops.org/ https://django.2scoops.org/), Javascript Allongé (https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge), and plenty of other things that have expanded my mind. The debate between promises, callbacks, and generators made me think critically about how I do asynchronous JS. The local love of functional programming has inspired me to dive in, and ultimately made me a better imperative programmer as well. And overhype of Edward Snowden's every movement aside, HN does a great job of surfacing stories about the intersection of policy and tech. I also value a lot of the discourse that happens here. I think HN, even with its flaws, is a better community for discussion than Slashdot, Ars, or most of the rest of the sites covering tech.

tedks 13y ago
I think everything you've said in your comment is correct, but when did the alternatives become "be a mindless drone" and "be a mindless drone who reads hacker news?"
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  My point is to criticize the implied argument that keeping your nose down working on the problems in front of you is inherently more productive than spending some time on HN to trying to gain some wider perspective. That's probably a strawman attack, but the first line of my comment wasn't meant to be taken so literally, which I tried to signal with the emoticon.
  - tedks 13y ago
    I generally agree that gaining a wider perspective is valuable, but it's not clear that HN is the best way to do that, and the OP outlines a number of reasons which make sense to me why it would be a bad way to do that. At the least, HN exists in a thickly-walled bubble. There's not a very wide perspective here.
13y ago

thebrokencube 13y ago

Why not just for amusement? Or to just see what interesting things people have come up with? Why does everything have to be "only towards this goal", what happened to just doing things just for curiosity's sake?

larrys 13y ago

"but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts" Agree that the downside always has to be taken into account. One thing that I have noticed over time is that at least some successful people tend to be highly focused and less interested in the types of things that, as they say on HN are "anything that piques one's curiosity". I'm amazed at how little curiosity they have actually. What you are describing (that I think some people are missing here) is that sometimes you read things on HN, you then fork, and then you are going down the next shiny ball of opportunity because it is so much fun to do. And so easy to do. Only a click away. So it's rationalized in a way like "well what could be bad about learning learning is always valuable!!" without taking into account the opportunity cost of all that learning. The key is as you say "less" and limits. There have been things over the past that I have forked to that have paid off in actual results and money. And things that have not. By devoting a set amount of time to satisfy curiosity you can gain much. But like with anything else you have to make sure you aren't shortchanging something else that is more important.

fhd2 13y ago

> Sure, but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts No idea, I just do it for leisure. And frankly, I hardly read any TFAs posted to HN. I first read the headlines, if something seems interesting, I skip to the comments. If I still think it's interesting, I might skim TFA. I'm not trying to be time efficient or anything, that's just how I enjoy using HN. > what are you really gaining from reading all of those "new technology of the month" postings? I basically never read posts about new stuff, unless the title says it's from someone I respect. If something shows up repeatedly, I might get interested and Google it, maybe even skim that article about it. All in all, I think I'm using HN a bit like Twitter: Lots of noise, with a little bit of signal in it I might want to follow up on.