Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What has HN given you?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 602 posts

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#131

Post by westoncb »

It was a kind of fuel while I worked at a grocery store trying to build some software that I thought would be game changing (it was a new kind of text editor that would break documents into interactive 'tiles' around grammatical boundaries[0]). Eventually it was on the front page here and I got tons of feedback, most of it good; and while I wasn't fortunate enough to get funding or anything, it's been a big part of why I've been able to get some pretty good/interesting work.

And, one day I'll post another project here and the world'll love it and all my problems financial and otherwise will be solved forever and all of humanity will live happily ever after etc. :P

I also have learned lots more about programming languages and various other CS topics than I likely would have without HN.

[0] http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#133

Post by callmevlad »

Nearly 5 years ago, a few months after being rejected from YC and a few weeks from being essentially bankrupt (my daughter had an unexpected surgery while we had only catastrophic health insurance), my brother and I posted a Show HN about Webflow (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407499). It was our last-ditch attempt to show a proof-of-concept to the world before going back to our old bosses to ask for our jobs back.

Thankfully, the post took off - we were #1 for most of the day, and over 25,000 people signed up for our beta list in the several days after that post. This helped us reapply to YC with a lot more confidence and traction, and we were able to get into the next batch.

Webflow (https://webflow.com/) has since grown into a profitable business with close to 1,000,000 users all over the world, billions of website requests served, and close to 60 team members in over 14 countries. I'm pretty sure none (or very little) of this would be possible without HN and the community here, and the super positive reception our post had.

Today, we're on a mission to enable more people to create powerful software without having to learn how to code - we probably have decades to make that vision a reality, but we're on a decent start in large part thanks to our launch on HN.

A HUGE thank you to the community here!

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#134

Post by Cytronex »

slovette wrote: post #73

HN, for me, is all about the comments. I’m always shopping for new perspectives or opinions that I haven’t seen yet that maybe give me a clue on how to do things better. People tend to give a lot of perspective in-between the words they’re writing. How people use, feel about or otherwise think about ‘things’ (products or services). That’s the gold here for me. Learning how people see the obviousness that I also see,…

You're missing out. Most of the interesting comments are shadowbanned.

Reddit is much better for open discussion. 10x better.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#136

Post by toomuchtodo »

t3rmi wrote: post #111
el_benhameen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot to be said for the “slim, fast-loading” bit! HN is my go-to “is my internet connection at all functional?” web page. And when T-Mobile cuts me off when I run over my data allotment each month, at least I can read the comments.

You should get their unlimited(30gb) plan. I've had it for the past year, it's been super good so far.

Throttling doesn't kick in until 50GB now (T-mobile One).

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#137

Post by mancerayder »

chris_wot wrote: post #12

Lectured at for over 2 years that I knew why I was rate limited. Got told for 2 years that I made “low quality” posts. It gave me a sense on injustice. You be the judge.

What's rate-limiting, being downvoted?

People get up and downvoted all the time. Why would that discourage you? A person can't live life without being questioned. And I'd much rather be questioned by smart strangers (even if I disagree) than argue with significant others.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#138

Post by ihm »

rdiddly wrote: post #56

A place to hang out (as it were) on the internet that is... ...connected to the tech scene ...ad-free ...not a "social network" in the usual data-harvesting sense ...slim, fast-loading, not riddled with bloat and bullshit ...not plagued quite so badly as the rest of the society "out there" by certain degenerate tendencies in what passes for discourse ...more interested in ideas and substance than in what color car th…

Well -- not totally ad free. There are the job postings for YC companies.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#139

Post by applecrazy »

dkersten wrote: post #108
pavanlimo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe 60 upvotes at the time is probably equal to >150 upvotes today.

Upvote inflation, interesting!

Somebody should mine the data and calculate year-over-year inflation rate, we have a mini economy on our hands! :)

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#140

Post by zitterbewegung »

arca_vorago wrote: post #80
zitterbewegung wrote: post #65

That being critical doesn't mean necessarily being mean. Knowledge about a bunch of new things that I wouldn't know. Inspiration to try and do new things. But, most importantly 7000+ pretend internet points and something to do when I'm bored.

Very much this. I am pretty passionate, but I've learned more about civil discourse on hn than just about anywhere else, mostly because of dang. At first I really resisted the non-user approved positivity rule change, but it's forced me to reevaluate how I approach disagreements online in general. (Even in irc) It's also been a place for me to vent a bit as a senior sysadmin, and learn quite a bit about how much I do…

Actually I started being less mean on my criticism because I thought that everyone would welcome the criticism with open arms when I was naive. Instead, now I try to complement people first or point out the good parts and highlight the bad.

I found that this started to bleed into my real life and at the end of the day it made me grow as a person.

Post reply on HN