Anything that have had a positive impact on your life.
Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
1–10 of 63 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#2You never know when knowledge on a scrap of paper floating in the wind turns out to be the key to the door of your destiny.
I've read this site for about 10 years now. The biggest thing is all the random blog posts I wouldn't ordinarily stumble upon. A lot of times, programming problems come up at work, and of course I know all the details of some arcane trivia because of 3 different articles I'd seen on it and different perspectives on it.
The biggest problem is then trying to go back and find which blog article I read. That's impossible.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#3I think the constant drip of interesting hardware related stuff has gotten me out of my software comfort zone.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#4You never know when knowledge on a scrap of paper floating in the wind turns out to be the key to the door of your destiny. I've read this site for about 10 years now. The biggest thing is all the random blog posts I wouldn't ordinarily stumble upon. A lot of times, programming problems come up at work, and of course I know all the details of some arcane trivia because of 3 different articles I'd seen on it and diffe…
I use the 'favorite' feature as my bookmark list on this site.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#5You never know when knowledge on a scrap of paper floating in the wind turns out to be the key to the door of your destiny. I've read this site for about 10 years now. The biggest thing is all the random blog posts I wouldn't ordinarily stumble upon. A lot of times, programming problems come up at work, and of course I know all the details of some arcane trivia because of 3 different articles I'd seen on it and diffe…
not a perfect solution, might not work for everyone, but keeping a personal wiki (folder with markdown files, Emacs Org Mode, Obsidian, etc) has worked well for me. Better than thousands of browser bookmarks I had prior.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#6There's an HN post that takes first place on my bookmarks bar, which is an Ask HN about the best paper people read in 2020 [^1]. Every once in a while I'll open it and browse through a ton of amazing papers and research and try to learn something new. Hasn't let me down yet.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#7Helped me get over the belief that people in tech must be super smart. Turns out they’re just as dumb as the rest of us.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#8This is as meta as it gets, but I learned what it sounds like when smart sounding, but closed minded people try to shut down an idea.
Looking over all the old YC projects that ended up being wildly successful, but their HN threads were full of naysayers who are better at sounding smart on the internet than providing actual feedback. Learning to differentiate between that kind of poster and people who have genuine feedback that reflects what users actually want is invaluable.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#9The discussion has been what brings me back. I comment a lot on HN which is an exception for me online and I find the replies I get are very thoughtful, even when they disagree. Every now and then I comment on something and someone comes in with a reply that shifts my perspective. That's what excites me.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best thing you learnt or got out of Hacker News?
#10It provides me with a sense of community that I lack in my life. I am driven by technology but not a lot of other people in my life are interested in these things.
It's often providing me with "restore faith in humanity" experiences when I see exchanges in the comments where the worst impulses of humanity are expressed, and someone will respond with an eloquent and well articulated rebuttal to the insanity that society has normalized.
There are also lots of smart people saying really dumb shit on here as other comments have alluded to.
But overall, this is one place that consistently restores my hope that there are other people out there who think like I do and share even a few of my values.