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Funny how this made it to #1 on Hacker News only to get bashed. It falls into the class: 1. I did something. 2. I want to share my experience with you. 3

by edw519 11y ago

Funny how this made it to #1 on Hacker News only to get bashed. It falls into the class: 1. I did something. 2. I want to share my experience with you. 3. This is about what I DID, not what I THINK. 4. Take from this what you want. 5. Hope it helps. I'm a programmer, not a writer, so this advice isn't a perfect fit for me, but it's pretty damn close. If one good idea from a 5 minute read is gold, then this post is platinum. Excellent advice, even more valuable because it comes from hard earned experience. Thanks Joel for the bulletin board material. Keep it coming.

justinzollars 11y ago
HN community also bashed Dropbox when it was new.
- pyre 11y ago
  ... and Slashdot bashed the iPod.
  - drivers99 11y ago
    CmdrTaco / Rob Malda criticized it famously, but it appears the comments were pretty supportive.[1] [1] http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...
  - ethbro 11y ago
    To be fair, Slashdot bashed the iPod (2001), not the iPod + iTunes w/ Store (2003). I think that's a pretty big difference.
- Killswitch 11y ago
  So take what the HN community says with a grain of salt? Noted.
- HanyouHottie 11y ago
  No it didn't. It gave some constructive criticism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
BozeWolf 11y ago
I apologise for not being positive about this article. But it's because of the way it was written. It is written like: this is what i did, and you should do the same. The big figure was intended to do what it did: publicity. Congratulations to Joel on that! It worked out pretty well:) The way you have read it is more like it was an advice. But to me it was not written like that.
- edanm 11y ago
  Not saying you're wrong, but a useful trick in life is to always give the benefit of the doubt to others. I think there are valuable things in that article, and I worry that you may have missed them because you didn't like the tone - which is a shame for the author, but possibly also a shame for you.
- joelklettke 11y ago
  You really don't have to apologize, I can see how it'd be read that way, and I'm culpable for that. I know you say publicity like it's a dirty or cheap word - but, what writer doesn't want people to read their work? What person doesn't want their story to get traction? Yes, it feels a bit cheap to throw numbers for attention. But my honest goal was not to wave a financial number like I've "made it", but use that as a means of opening the floor for discussion and sharing. I appreciate that to many people, that's going to seem really insincere, but I hope that the rest of the piece made it worth your time.
  - BozeWolf 11y ago
    "I know you say publicity like it's a dirty or cheap word" No, I don't. You should not have read it like that ;-) I thought because you are a freelancer you were looking for publicity. The big number is a bit cheap, but if it works... So the congrats was actually a real congrats. Not that many people managed to get on top of HN. Weird thing is, i received so many points on my initial "bashing" comment. I thought i would have ended up with -10 at least. I expected the comment above to receive 1 point but it ends up in the -. Ah well. All in all it is quite amazing how differently the same thing can be interpreted.
joelklettke 11y ago
Hey - thank you! I'm okay with being bashed - I just think I'm being misread. I never intended this to be a prescriptive guide to success, just some reflection on what I, myself, have learned from the process. Thank you for reading, and for being open to the idea that this is just my experience!
Kurtz79 11y ago
I can see that there are about an equal number of negative and positive comments to the post, and an even higher number of neutral ones. Overall I definitely cannot see where the "bashing by HN community" is.

by edw519 11y ago

justinzollars 11y ago

HN community also bashed Dropbox when it was new.

pyre 11y ago
... and Slashdot bashed the iPod.
- drivers99 11y ago
  CmdrTaco / Rob Malda criticized it famously, but it appears the comments were pretty supportive.[1] [1] http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...
- ethbro 11y ago
  To be fair, Slashdot bashed the iPod (2001), not the iPod + iTunes w/ Store (2003). I think that's a pretty big difference.
Killswitch 11y ago
So take what the HN community says with a grain of salt? Noted.
HanyouHottie 11y ago
No it didn't. It gave some constructive criticism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

BozeWolf 11y ago

I apologise for not being positive about this article. But it's because of the way it was written. It is written like: this is what i did, and you should do the same. The big figure was intended to do what it did: publicity. Congratulations to Joel on that! It worked out pretty well:) The way you have read it is more like it was an advice. But to me it was not written like that.

edanm 11y ago
Not saying you're wrong, but a useful trick in life is to always give the benefit of the doubt to others. I think there are valuable things in that article, and I worry that you may have missed them because you didn't like the tone - which is a shame for the author, but possibly also a shame for you.
joelklettke 11y ago
You really don't have to apologize, I can see how it'd be read that way, and I'm culpable for that. I know you say publicity like it's a dirty or cheap word - but, what writer doesn't want people to read their work? What person doesn't want their story to get traction? Yes, it feels a bit cheap to throw numbers for attention. But my honest goal was not to wave a financial number like I've "made it", but use that as a means of opening the floor for discussion and sharing. I appreciate that to many people, that's going to seem really insincere, but I hope that the rest of the piece made it worth your time.
- BozeWolf 11y ago
  "I know you say publicity like it's a dirty or cheap word" No, I don't. You should not have read it like that ;-) I thought because you are a freelancer you were looking for publicity. The big number is a bit cheap, but if it works... So the congrats was actually a real congrats. Not that many people managed to get on top of HN. Weird thing is, i received so many points on my initial "bashing" comment. I thought i would have ended up with -10 at least. I expected the comment above to receive 1 point but it ends up in the -. Ah well. All in all it is quite amazing how differently the same thing can be interpreted.

joelklettke 11y ago

Hey - thank you! I'm okay with being bashed - I just think I'm being misread. I never intended this to be a prescriptive guide to success, just some reflection on what I, myself, have learned from the process. Thank you for reading, and for being open to the idea that this is just my experience!

Kurtz79 11y ago

I can see that there are about an equal number of negative and positive comments to the post, and an even higher number of neutral ones. Overall I definitely cannot see where the "bashing by HN community" is.