21–30 of 195 posts
Reading HN gives me things to mull over regarding my own hesitant steps into the world of promotion, sales, and making a business happen on the web.
Also I used to dabble in programming back in the days of the C64 and Amiga. I will probably never do any major programming projects but I like to keep up with tech news, and this is a decent source for some of that.
there seems to be about a 60/40 split between straight tech/programming stuff and more general/non-technical information in a pleasantly-mixed churn. i find HN to be a good motivator to look at other fields through a "hacker" lens and think in an architectural/programming/entrepreneurial/system-level manner.
I enjoy reading about new tech and business - I like the mix of that and other general interest stories. Mostly I come here for the comments - I read comments before most articles, and I tend to only read the articles if there is a good discussion around them.
I'm a consulting actuary. What am I doing here? I've been programming since I was 11 and still do it often. You have to as an actuary. Besides I have some web skills and I'm using to build a startup doing risk management for farmers. In this startup I'm responsible for the whole stack.
Also have web skills (the coincidences just keep coming). I do a few things on the side and am contemplating a bootstrapped startup soonish. For example, I did everything but the logo on this site: http://tvsift.com/
I work in infection control in a large urban hospital (microbiology and epidemiology background/education). Computer skills required for my job are basically Word and Excel. I enjoy the tech startup world and have plans to start my own in the very near future. Currently using various sites to learn to program myself (Codeacademy, Bento, Dash). I think it is important to know what your site is doing and be able to res…
There is always going to be someone better than you. I'd say just start working on your site's JS, you have no idea how much you'll learn in the process :)
I've been reading HN for around 5 years. I'm here because I love technology, and love seeing what people are doing with it. Outside a few email lists and Twitter, there's no other site/source that I've stuck with for so long.
What do I get out of it? Aside from always learning new things (I have very little use for lambda calculus or univariate linear regression in my life, yet because of HN I know a lot about both). I spend a lot of my time now working with / mentoring / investing in Melbourne-based startups, and the comments and links I read on HN give me perspectives and thinking and experiences from a global startup community that I wouldn't always have access to.
Of course those opinions and perspectives and experiences are almost always skewed, this place is a filter bubble, but if you keep the bias in mind it's a phenomenally efficient filter of quality information and thinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is always going to be someone better than you. I'd say just start working on your site's JS, you have no idea how much you'll learn in the process :)
Thanks. I did the same a few years ago when I took a job that required Filemaker development and I had never used the software before (downloaded the free trial before the job). Once you start using something, and you have the knowledge to know where to look for help/answers, you can do quite a bit.
And would love to hear your plans too!