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I guess what I meant by "professional" was more people with a formal education in computer science and some years of practical experience. It is just my impress

by kluck 11y ago

I guess what I meant by "professional" was more people with a formal education in computer science and some years of practical experience. It is just my impression that this is not so much the case here at HN. This being said, I do not mean to be disrespectful towards someone who "only" has practical training (they may be older so that when they studied there was no formal computer-specific education). edit: nice typo "sad" -> "said" ;)

Udo 11y ago
> "I guess what I meant by "professional" was more people with a formal education in computer science and some years of practical experience. It is just my impression that this is not so much the case here at HN. This being said, I do not mean to be disrespectful towards someone who "only" has practical training (they may be older so that when they studied there was no formal computer-specific education)." I have to admit this reply does leave me a little speechless. On many levels. Anyway, good luck finding what you're looking for!
- kluck 11y ago
  My impression may very well be wrong. Maybe the (education of the) people behind are even less relevant. The community I am looking for should focus on professional software development. The occasional "look at this new framework" and such is ok but HN is just bloated with posts around web startups, becoming a web developer and finding out about computer science basics. edit: clarified "education"
  - DanBC 11y ago
    You've made a few submissions. None of them seem to be relevant to what you're asking for in this post. (Maybe the mature software one does?) I suspect that HN would like some deeply technical post. Perhaps you could try writing one and submitting it? Or find your five favourite blog posts by other people and submitting those?
    - kluck 11y ago
      I think it boils down to this: Hacker News is a "news" site and what I am looking for is a discussion forum where people discuss software development topics.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Software development topics seem to be solidly on-topic. Try submitting a few software development articles and seeing if they get any discussion? A long time ago I submitted this, which got some traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4898691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4898691 Is that the kind of thing you're talking about, or more technical software computer science stuff?
golergka 11y ago
I'm confused — are you looking for people in computer science field, or programming?
- kluck 11y ago
  I am not explicitly looking for people but for posts about the mentioned topics with the mentioned focus. So both topics fit.
michaelt 11y ago
To get to the top in forums that use voting (HN, reddit etc) articles have to get upvotes - and as each user only has one upvote to give, to get lots of upvotes an article needs to appeal to a lot of people and get upvotes from them. That means articles need broad appeal. If you write a great article, but readers have to already know about <topic foo>, only a small fraction of readers will upvote it. If you go into fewer technical details but include more introductory content, and focus on topics that have broader appeal, you'll get more upvotes. You also don't want the article to be too long - most forums rank, in some way, on votes-against-time and some readers don't have time to read a lengthy article. If the user doesn't get back to the forum they don't upvote, and if they decide to save the article and read it later, it's off the front page before they read it and upvote. Forums like HN and Reddit rarely link to arXiv papers because it's just the nature of the system.
arethuza 11y ago
What kind of "formal" CS topics do you mean? NB I get the impression that there are a fair number of people on here with CS education at all levels... Edit: At this moment the top article is "A Polynomial Time Bounded-Error Quantum Algorithm for Boolean Satisfiability" - which seems pretty CS to me...
untog 11y ago
they may be older so that when they studied there was no formal computer-specific education The reality is likely to be the other way around - older people will have taken fundamental computer science stuff, wheras younger people do not have such a need to.

by kluck 11y ago

Udo 11y ago

> "I guess what I meant by "professional" was more people with a formal education in computer science and some years of practical experience. It is just my impression that this is not so much the case here at HN. This being said, I do not mean to be disrespectful towards someone who "only" has practical training (they may be older so that when they studied there was no formal computer-specific education)." I have to admit this reply does leave me a little speechless. On many levels. Anyway, good luck finding what you're looking for!

kluck 11y ago
My impression may very well be wrong. Maybe the (education of the) people behind are even less relevant. The community I am looking for should focus on professional software development. The occasional "look at this new framework" and such is ok but HN is just bloated with posts around web startups, becoming a web developer and finding out about computer science basics. edit: clarified "education"
- DanBC 11y ago
  You've made a few submissions. None of them seem to be relevant to what you're asking for in this post. (Maybe the mature software one does?) I suspect that HN would like some deeply technical post. Perhaps you could try writing one and submitting it? Or find your five favourite blog posts by other people and submitting those?
  - kluck 11y ago
    I think it boils down to this: Hacker News is a "news" site and what I am looking for is a discussion forum where people discuss software development topics.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Software development topics seem to be solidly on-topic. Try submitting a few software development articles and seeing if they get any discussion? A long time ago I submitted this, which got some traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4898691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4898691 Is that the kind of thing you're talking about, or more technical software computer science stuff?

golergka 11y ago

I'm confused — are you looking for people in computer science field, or programming?

kluck 11y ago
I am not explicitly looking for people but for posts about the mentioned topics with the mentioned focus. So both topics fit.

michaelt 11y ago

To get to the top in forums that use voting (HN, reddit etc) articles have to get upvotes - and as each user only has one upvote to give, to get lots of upvotes an article needs to appeal to a lot of people and get upvotes from them. That means articles need broad appeal. If you write a great article, but readers have to already know about <topic foo>, only a small fraction of readers will upvote it. If you go into fewer technical details but include more introductory content, and focus on topics that have broader appeal, you'll get more upvotes. You also don't want the article to be too long - most forums rank, in some way, on votes-against-time and some readers don't have time to read a lengthy article. If the user doesn't get back to the forum they don't upvote, and if they decide to save the article and read it later, it's off the front page before they read it and upvote. Forums like HN and Reddit rarely link to arXiv papers because it's just the nature of the system.

arethuza 11y ago

What kind of "formal" CS topics do you mean? NB I get the impression that there are a fair number of people on here with CS education at all levels... Edit: At this moment the top article is "A Polynomial Time Bounded-Error Quantum Algorithm for Boolean Satisfiability" - which seems pretty CS to me...

untog 11y ago

they may be older so that when they studied there was no formal computer-specific education The reality is likely to be the other way around - older people will have taken fundamental computer science stuff, wheras younger people do not have such a need to.