It’s true you’re not famous. But the rest of this is pretty bad advice. If you’re an indie app developer and you don’t care about design, nobody will use your app—not just the people who care about design. If you’re a blogger and you don’t care about grammar, some people will be turned off by your terrible writing. I assume anything you do you want to do well. If that’s not the case then definitely take the advice in the original post.
Stop Acting Like You're Famous
221–230 of 282 posts
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the second you want to make things for anyone else is when UI/UX matters. Some people (and many people on HN) take graphic design for granted, but it's the first thing they seem about your product. It matters. Your app can work flawlessly but nobody will use it if the text has poor contrast or the buttons are comically small, for example.
People say this but I never saw it matter like you say. I know many ux/ui people in my network who I ask for feedback and help; I have never seen any difference in uptake from the vanilla theme version I did myself through to months of tweaking these guys did. Sure it looks tons nicer but it doesn’t reflect at all in (measured) user satisfaction, signups or usage. The default themes these days (shadcn etc) don’t make…
Would it change anything if Hacker News was redesigned to look exactly like Reddit's UI? Because a lot of people would not want that. Behind the scenes, there are a lot of similarities between the two sites - but doesn't the fact that they look so different actually make them different?
If you're saying design doesn't matter at all then changing the look of Hacker News to be like Reddit should have no effect on user satisfaction, signups, or usage.
I sense a bias toward minimalism (that I share) but that's still intentional design.
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The comments are often better than the articles. I disagree.
Same here. The top comment we're discussing is a good example of comments I really dislike :/ people think that only things they find interesting should be upvoted by everyone else :D that kind of thinking, which is very common in HN comments, shows just how much one can lack understanding of others, their motivations, how people's tastes/objectives/world views can be completely and utterly different than their own.
> The top comment we're discussing is a good example of comments I really dislike :/
As a revealed preference, no, you don't. It's trivially easy to collapse a comment you genuinely don't like, which would mean you wouldn't be posting in its replies more than halfway down.
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#224It's fun how this makes me both agree and disagree at the same time.
For whatever reason I manage to re-sign in to LinkedIn or Twitter once in a while, and boy do I hate the tone of people who act like they're some sort of business guru. Beyond the point of the article, there's a pretentious tone that I think one should avoid.
But stuff like:
> Blogging is fun and therapeutic. Grammar and editing aren’t
I have to disagree with. I like the craft portion of any activity. It's the type 2 sort of fun, where it's not necessarily fun when you do it, but the result makes you proud and happy, so it's worth it.
I think a better advice might be to do things for yourself rather than trying to please others?
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I defiantly do not want to see people's typos move the language forward, especially when it's native speakers always making the same silly mistakes, for some reason (could of, they're/their, your's, etc.). I do like non-native speakers translating and incorporating their local sayings into English prose.
> people's The possessive apostrophe originated as a mistake or idiosyncrasy, credited to one of two people in the early 1500s depending on who's making the assertion, that became widely adopted. Possession should be, in static, unchanging, OBJECTIVELY CORRECT DON'T YOU DARE GO CHANGIN IT English, written "peoplees" (or something like that but you get the point). Merely calling "'" an "apostrophe" was a mistake for o…
> OBJECTIVELY CORRECT DON'T YOU DARE GO CHANGIN IT English
Your point is well taken, but this attitude toward the orthography and grammar of English emerged several centuries after the 1500s. There was nothing resembling an accepted orthography when the personal apostrophe emerged. Everyone was winging it.
Prescriptive grammar peaked in the mid to late 1900s or thereabouts. Linguists are more relaxed about their approach to language these days. Most publications have a style guide, but if you don't have an editor, there's no reason to cargo-cult it.
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#226I’m going to hard disagree with this. A lot of the enjoyment I get from creation is the process of others enjoying what I’ve built. Further more, building for others is great for building out areas you’re weak or inexperienced in. Like, I was poor on the accessibility front until I found the thing I created resonated with the visually impaired folk.
Imagine you made a mug and nobody used it. That’s a bummer. Imagine you wrote a novel but can’t find anyone to read it. That’s a bummer too. Art is there to create experiences for people. If somebody writes a novel in the woods, but nobody is there to read it, does it really make sound?
Imagine you made a mug and wrote a novel! Not a bummer at all.
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I took up sewing, not because I want to sew the perfect shirt, but because men’s fashion sucks" I applaud taking up this skill, but there absolute is stellar men's fashion out there, it's just not outwardly public AFA retailers and brands. I was a member of https://www.styleforum.net for many years and highly recommend it. And you can get MTM custom clothing on the relative cheap. I've used https://www.divij.com/ in…
No offense but the fashion I like is way more colorful.
That statement isn't particularly specific, but Styleforum covers everything - want to dress to the standards of a 19th century dandy? They have you covered.
There are sartorial competitions they chronicle where it would be impossible to get any more colorful.
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#228> Anything you do or create will probably receive little to no attention, so stop optimizing for a non-existent audience [...] The most egregious thing you can do with any activity is daydream about how you can make money off of it [...] In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it. I don't understand the equivalence the author is ultimately making in suggesting that creating somethi…
The danger with wanting to polish things before putting them out into the world, is often you never share anything because it's never "done". And you may be polishing something in the wrong direction, which you would know if you put the unpolished version out into the world to get feedback.
For some it so hard to recognize that perfection is often an unattainable ideal
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#229Why is it so that every so often one of these feel-good LinkedIn-style posts make it to the front page? Is there so much demand for banality on this site? I come here to read good tech articles or articles that stimulate my curiosity and it is sad to see these articles upvoted to the top when so many other good articles at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest continue to languish.
There's always been a place for the occasional self-help or inspirational article on HN. I think there's probably a bit less of it than there used to be.
If you see good articles on /newest that are languishing, please upvote them!
...and if there's a really good one that hasn't had attention, please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can consider putting it in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). Especially if it's not an article you have any personal connection to—we'll appreciate the nomination a lot more if it's motivated by curiosity rather than self-promotion.
Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous
#230There are people out there so utterly brain-broken (myself included) who seek to monetize every little personal hobby.
“Maybe I should start journaling” turns into “How can I be a thought leader on bleeping journaling?” And it ruins everything.
I’ve done this multiple times and regret it. I’ve only recently adopted the mindset that this author is attempting to convey, which is simple: identify what you enjoy and why, and just do it - don’t try to exploit it and monetize it (which the author has strangely conflated to “being famous” I think)
So I like the article. It’s a nice reminder. As to the other commenters railing against its “LinkedIn-ness” or it being a platitude, sure - but it’s upvoted and it is what it is now.