I personally know somebody who posted in 'who wants to be hired' and was picked by good Samaritan here on HN. This changed my perspective, I was sceptical anybody on hiring side reads the 'who wants to be hired'. I started to read them after this happened (I'm not on hiring side but I share posts that catch eye)
Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
11–20 of 30 posts
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#12This comment by hoppityboppity pretty much changed my whole perspective on things and made me realize I've pretty much wasted my professional life: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33452920 It rings more true than ever. The really important computing nowadays is all done on the GPU; the CPU is little more than a front-end processor. Furthermore, with AI and LLMs we're rapidly converging on a future where programm…
I'm not young but I'm optimistic about the future :) when horses were replaced by cars, bunch of new industries was created. I wholeheartedly believe we will see this happen with code generation.
On a side note I like writing code, I think I'm not alone. Who knows, maye ol'good internet will be reborn?
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#13"The purpose of charity is to end the need for charity"
IIRC, paraphrasing a quote from u/chubot, or someone very much like them.
My personal prime motivator is something like:
Help people help themselves.
And help those who can't.
If I'm really devoted to feeding the hungry, for instance, I should always remember the proper goal is to end hunger (outright).
Even if that goal is unattainable. Maybe because that goal is unattainable. Which leads to a deeper inspection of the root causes, moral foundations, social context, etc.
It's just so easy to get caught up in the immediate necessity and lose site of root causes.
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#14I won't find the post, but the advice I read here that worked for me was something like : "If you want to do a project and are scared of the size, just start and see how far you can go".
This really lifted the pressure off. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work in the end, just see how far you can go. It's really simple.
This allowed me to launch a product, make a few thousand bucks from it, and then fold it, cause it wasn't such a good idea.
This same advice allowed me to finish the 1st version of a screenplay I wanted to write. I am in the 2nd version now. We'll see where it goes.
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#15[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#166 weeks before my son turned 4, I read a post here recommending the book 'Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons'. Since three months after his 4th birthday, he's been an avid reader, which has unlocked opportunities for joy/entertainment and for curiosity/learning. Reading has also increased his spoken vocabulary. I know because a couple of times I've heard him use a word correctly but pronounce it incorrectly…
made an account just to add to this. I did this workbook with my son the summer between K and 1st. every night we did a single lesson and his teachers were flabbergasted as he breezed through the spelling and reading curriculum for the entire year in the first month. the rest of the year he was allowed to choose books from the library while the others did assigned readings and he’s reading somewhere between 3rd and 4th grade level without any additional “study.”
the book provides a literal script for the parent to read, like inline code comments, which took a lot of the overhead out of it on my side. heart melting hearing him say his favorite gift/summer memory was “my dad teaching me to read!”
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#17Derek Sivers Below Average
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#18No particular post. I like HN's grab-bag aspect, there's something for everyone. Peeking your interest about things you hadn't heard of before, or get a new angle on something.
Beats all the "Trump did X, popstar married gf" crap out there.
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#19Someone posted a link to a blog that I can now no longer find that broke down the cost of nuclear power and showed that even at 0$ cost for power generation it wasn’t competitive and that solar is dirt cheap in comparison. Really changed my perspective. The same thing with blog posts on energy grid, peak load and power source management. This sort of discussion never seems to hit mainstream.
Re: Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?
#20No particular post. I like HN's grab-bag aspect, there's something for everyone. Peeking your interest about things you hadn't heard of before, or get a new angle on something. Beats all the "Trump did X, popstar married gf" crap out there.
> Beats all the "Trump did X, popstar married gf" crap out there.
No doubt, HN is one of the best resources for tech and tech adjacent topics. It has all sorts of people ranging from the experts to beginners. Also, tech is one of the easiest thing to provide proof or refute (Ofcourse subjective debates lik vim vs emacs, formatting, best practices exists for fun). So, the quality of discussions on those topics are high.
When HN posts deviate and gets into murky discussions like (geo)politics it gets ugly too. The title may not be "Trump did X" but the content on those related issues is not too far from that on other forums.
I don't think HN crowd and discussions are immune to the crap found on other forums, it's just the theme and majority of topics that reach front page are resistant and have less scope for ugly discussions.
That said, I'm not discounting the effort put in by everyone and the mods to keep the discussion clean but in the end we are all people and (hopefully) not AI bots and that shows sometimes.