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

521–530 of 602 posts

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#521

Post by 0x11 »

I've spent the past hour reading through just some of the unbelievable stories in this thread, the whole time thinking, or maybe hoping, that someday this community would somehow benefit me in such a meaningful way as well.

It just finally struck me, however, that one of the most significant changes in my recent life and one that has made me feel the most fulfilled can be traced back to reading a post on HN. In 2016 I read an something on here about a new conpletely free software university in San Francisco called 42. A few months later I was in SF learning/teaching myself to code in C alongside some of the most brilliant people I've ever met.

If you'd have asked two weeks ago, HN, I'd have told you I was developing a mobile app in React Native for a quirky company in Prague. If you ask today, I'm unemployed and working on a website to showcase my skills. Either way, I'm miles from where I started and never would have been here had it not been for that post.

Thank you HackerNews.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#522

Post by lawnchair_larry »

rw2 wrote: post #514
mazumdar wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly 5 years ago, a few months after being rejected from YC for the first time, I came across your Show HN and started using Webflow to build a mockup of my product's sign-up page (I did not know how to code at that time). Over the next 2.5 years, I reapplied to YC five more times. I interviewed twice in the second round. I eventually got rejected every time. From the ideation stage, to $1M in revenue, YC has an ap…

The crazy thing here for me is that YC rejected you as a business with $1M in revenue. I think any business with $1M in revenue has tremendous potential.

It’s not that crazy. YC wants businesses with the potential for billions in revenue. If your ceiling seems like it might be millions or tens of millions, you don’t meet their criteria.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#523

Post by wglb »

Got my first security gig by reaching out to someone here on HN.

Lots of high quality discussions here, with quite a range of experts. Where else can you find more than one lawyer who is also a compiler developer? World-class experts in small business, cryptography, breaking cryptography, old war stories, and lively discussion on many topics.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#524

Post by elhudy »

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…

Do you or does anyone know of any similar websites that are similar but slightly less-tech focused? I love it here but the coding articles / jobs can occasionally lose me.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#525

Post by acct1771 »

Kluny wrote: post #190
Cytronex wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out. Most of the interesting comments are shadowbanned. Reddit is much better for open discussion. 10x better.

The strict moderation is a feature for me.

I just wish I could choose to see what was removed, somehow.

Do you feel that'd impede on your experience, that being possible? Genuine question.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#526

Post by acct1771 »

spython wrote: post #497
gruseom wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yippee!

Hah, wow, now I can thank you in person! Thanks to your well written comment I read the book, learned to move and dance, fell in love, got amazing friends, went skinny dipping with beautiful dancers in the summer, got heartbroken, learned to accept change, and started developing objects that behave and choreograph the user through their behavior. And all for the want of a nail.. Thank you!

What order did all that shit happen in, exactly?

Y'know. For a friend.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#527

Post by wglb »

acct1771 wrote: post #525
Kluny wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strict moderation is a feature for me.

I just wish I could choose to see what was removed, somehow. Do you feel that'd impede on your experience, that being possible? Genuine question.

In your profile, there is a choice called "showdead". If you set that to yes, you see those comments.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#528

Post by crummy »

Cytronex wrote: post #134
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.

which subreddits? I haven't found this to be the case, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#529

Post by stfwn »

tarruda wrote: post #312

It indirectly funded my work on a personal project - Neovim - for nearly two years. The work was actually funded through bountysource, but without the momentum gained by my post HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7278214 ), which stayed in the front page for more than 12 hours, the bountysource campaign may not have been successful. HN had a major impact on Neovim being a successful open source project.

Thank you for your work! Neovim was really the first tool that got me hooked on the CLI.

It led me down a path that really paid off in terms of how much I learned: about using nvim, customising it with a dotfile - a skill that turned out to generalise really well-, then about version control from the command line, learned to use Docker because it seemed useful to Dockerize nvim at the time (?), I rented a VPS to be able to run nvim on a tablet, well then I had to learn about the structure of Linux..

It just went on and on, and it's still going on! To most here on HN these are elementary skills, but you have to start somewhere. And I started with Neovim.

Thank you!

Post reply on HN