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The honest to god answer is very simple. The website was made, and administered by pg (Paul Graham) directly. He was (until very recently), the only eyes on the

The honest to god answer is very simple. The website was made, and administered by pg (Paul Graham) directly. He was (until very recently), the only eyes on the code base, and the only maintainer. The code was sloppy, and generally un-reviewed. A lot of features didn't exist because they didn't exist when the site was started, or were just deemed unnecessary. As of recently a new team has taken over, who before adding new features is porting the entire website over to a more maintainable code standard. New features are coming, just eventually.

ajarmst 12y ago
It's fairly impressive that HN lasted this long without creeping featurism and an iteration of "I'll refactor this in my favourite language"(tm) by a new maintainer who (as is normal for humans) confuses "my personal preference" with "objectively better". It couldn't last forever.
- duncan_bayne 12y ago
  I think you mean rewrite, not refactor. * or perhaps not, but cynicism and beer lead me to a pessimistic outlook as the clock nears midnight
- dang 12y ago
  This is a shrewd observation.
dang 12y ago
> The code was sloppy Oh no no. The code is not sloppy. Anyone who has read one of PG's essays or his many HN comments can ask themselves whether his writing seems sloppy. PG's code is like his writing—it is his writing. He does have a distinctive style, and that style (unsurprisingly, to any of his readers) is profoundly minimalist. That's the real answer to the OP's question.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  Incomprehensible style is a nice word for sloppy. The effect of either is exactly the same, one just implies respect. If you say code that is minimalistic to the point its incomprehensible is better then code so sloppy its incomprehensible, I don't see how one is any better then the other from a maintenance prospective (the former would be better in run time likely).
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Older versions of the news.arc code have been published. It isn't "incomprehensible"; in fact, it's atypically easy to follow, because it's (perhaps unwisely) built around a continuation passing abstraction he designed for the purpose of simplifying the code. Maybe you'd have an easier time making whatever point you're trying to make about HN's code by pointing to some spot in the news.arc code that you had trouble understanding. There are solid criticisms you can make of HN (I could probably come up with 4 or 5), but the fact that you opened with "sloppy" and "incomprehensible" makes me wonder how closely you actually read the code.
  - dang 12y ago
    "Incomprehensible style is a nice word for sloppy." Then since it isn't sloppy, you won't be surprised to learn that it isn't incomprehensible either. :) In software (as probably in everything) people tend to think that non-standard and uncommon things must be worse. It's in the DNA of Hacker News not to think that way, and to me that is one of its most precious qualities. The HN code is somehow symbolic of all this, whether it's to one's personal taste or not. So yay the HN code!
wglb 12y ago
Regarding that pg was the only eyes on the hn code, this is certainly not the impression I get from reading http://arclanguage.org/ http://arclanguage.org/. There are other users of news.arc, for example http://www.cryptocurrencylive.com/ http://www.cryptocurrencylive.com/. Several HNers have helped maintain the site over the years, sometime in a major way. Looking at the code, it is certainly not sloppy. In fact its size belies its functionality. This is a good thing in programming. I hadn't heard that it is being ported. Is there some reference that you can point to for this? The evidence of new team is that 'dang has stepped up to do more visible and active moderation.

ajarmst 12y ago

It's fairly impressive that HN lasted this long without creeping featurism and an iteration of "I'll refactor this in my favourite language"(tm) by a new maintainer who (as is normal for humans) confuses "my personal preference" with "objectively better". It couldn't last forever.

duncan_bayne 12y ago
I think you mean rewrite, not refactor. * or perhaps not, but cynicism and beer lead me to a pessimistic outlook as the clock nears midnight
dang 12y ago
This is a shrewd observation.

dang 12y ago

> The code was sloppy Oh no no. The code is not sloppy. Anyone who has read one of PG's essays or his many HN comments can ask themselves whether his writing seems sloppy. PG's code is like his writing—it is his writing. He does have a distinctive style, and that style (unsurprisingly, to any of his readers) is profoundly minimalist. That's the real answer to the OP's question.

valarauca1 12y ago
Incomprehensible style is a nice word for sloppy. The effect of either is exactly the same, one just implies respect. If you say code that is minimalistic to the point its incomprehensible is better then code so sloppy its incomprehensible, I don't see how one is any better then the other from a maintenance prospective (the former would be better in run time likely).
- tptacek 12y ago
  Older versions of the news.arc code have been published. It isn't "incomprehensible"; in fact, it's atypically easy to follow, because it's (perhaps unwisely) built around a continuation passing abstraction he designed for the purpose of simplifying the code. Maybe you'd have an easier time making whatever point you're trying to make about HN's code by pointing to some spot in the news.arc code that you had trouble understanding. There are solid criticisms you can make of HN (I could probably come up with 4 or 5), but the fact that you opened with "sloppy" and "incomprehensible" makes me wonder how closely you actually read the code.
- dang 12y ago
  "Incomprehensible style is a nice word for sloppy." Then since it isn't sloppy, you won't be surprised to learn that it isn't incomprehensible either. :) In software (as probably in everything) people tend to think that non-standard and uncommon things must be worse. It's in the DNA of Hacker News not to think that way, and to me that is one of its most precious qualities. The HN code is somehow symbolic of all this, whether it's to one's personal taste or not. So yay the HN code!

wglb 12y ago

Regarding that pg was the only eyes on the hn code, this is certainly not the impression I get from reading http://arclanguage.org/ http://arclanguage.org/. There are other users of news.arc, for example http://www.cryptocurrencylive.com/ http://www.cryptocurrencylive.com/. Several HNers have helped maintain the site over the years, sometime in a major way. Looking at the code, it is certainly not sloppy. In fact its size belies its functionality. This is a good thing in programming. I hadn't heard that it is being ported. Is there some reference that you can point to for this? The evidence of new team is that 'dang has stepped up to do more visible and active moderation.