“12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News” • Hacker News Board

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#71

Post by nothis » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #3

"Finished" is the right word. Apart from small UI tweaks it's still the same site as in 2007... And that's part of what makes HN great! I can't help but think that a team of Very Serious Expensive UX Professionals would have made a mess of HN thrice over by this time. (Can't you just imagine the 2010 rewrite in Java and GWT, and the 2014 redesign as an Angular SPA with sophisticated giant web fonts all over the place…

When you'd load the page, you'd see blank, gray bars where the text should go while a "now loading" icon spins for a good 5 seconds, slowly feeding in the text. On mobile, text would be so big it only fits 7 lines on screen, 5 words on each. The menu bar at the top would stay up there as you scroll and eat a good 20% of vertical space at all times. Articles would load in thumbnail images that sometimes break and push the text outside the window and you couldn't scroll to read it because that's disabled for some CSS hack.

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#72

Post by dd36 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

laichzeit0 wrote: post #6

pavlov wrote: post #3

"Finished" is the right word. Apart from small UI tweaks it's still the same site as in 2007... And that's part of what makes HN great! I can't help but think that a team of Very Serious Expensive UX Professionals would have made a mess of HN thrice over by this time. (Can't you just imagine the 2010 rewrite in Java and GWT, and the 2014 redesign as an Angular SPA with sophisticated giant web fonts all over the place…

Like when they re-did the Slashdot interface. I remember it was crap and I stopped using it then. That's probably 10 years ago now.

The Reddit redesign has been a turn off.

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#73

Post by bluedino » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

hiccuphippo wrote: post #49

mywittyname wrote: post #22

Does HN make money?

Can I turn around this question and ask how much does it cost to run HN?

One server, probably < $100/month

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#74

Post by bluedino » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

>> (I delayed launching it till Feb 07, IIRC because the Reddits worried it would mess up their acquisition by Conde Nast.)

Did they think it was a competitor or something?

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#75

Post by perryprog » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #70

dangrossman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I host http://hnreplies.com which provides comment reply notifications by email, FYI.

What happens if I sign up and then decide later I want to disconnect your service?

There's a button at the bottom of each email to unsubscribe.

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#76

Post by xrisk » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

hiccuphippo wrote: post #59

shittyadmin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't mind the lack of comment reply notifications because I find that it makes conversations less aggressive than on sites like reddit which do that. Less of a feeling of a mandated reply, more opportunities for other users to speak up on your behalf.

The main reason I'd like that functionality is so I can read the responses. Sometimes karma changes are an indicator you got responses but not always.

I think the “threads” page fulfils that purpose.

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#77

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

java-man wrote: post #46

asaph wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one would like to see some improvements. Here is my wishlist: 1. Markdown support 2. More profile capabilities. e.g. avatars, vanity URLs, link to your GitHub, Twitter, Stack Overflow, blog, etc. 3. Automatically create cache link for articles in case their hosts go down after being linked from HN. 4. Revision history for comments.

Avatars. The main purpose of avatars is to track you. Please, HN, do not add avatars.

Huh? How is an avatar different from a username in that regard?

Maybe you're referring to Gravatars?

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#78

Post by dopamean » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

shittyadmin wrote: post #42

babuskov wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I miss are comment reply notifications. Someone might reply to something I wrote in comments a week ago and I have to visit my comment history periodically to check that. It doesn't have to be an active notification. Just add a numeric field added to user account that means "you got N new replies" and show it in the top-right corner next to my username. Once I see it, I will go and browse through comme…

I honestly don't mind the lack of comment reply notifications because I find that it makes conversations less aggressive than on sites like reddit which do that. Less of a feeling of a mandated reply, more opportunities for other users to speak up on your behalf.

> I find that it makes conversations less aggressive

This is a really interesting perspective on it that I hadn't considered. I have long been annoyed by the lack of comment notifications but now that you put it that way I think you're right. This actually may be a feature of HN rather than a bug. Thanks for sharing that point.

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#79

Post by nkrisc » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #3

"Finished" is the right word. Apart from small UI tweaks it's still the same site as in 2007... And that's part of what makes HN great! I can't help but think that a team of Very Serious Expensive UX Professionals would have made a mess of HN thrice over by this time. (Can't you just imagine the 2010 rewrite in Java and GWT, and the 2014 redesign as an Angular SPA with sophisticated giant web fonts all over the place…

Hey now, as a Don't-Take-Myself-Too Serious Moderately-Well-Paid UX Professional much of my job is trying to get sites to something as simple as this one.

I would do something about some of the text contrast here though. Maybe an additional form of feedback when editing a comment as well.

Re: “12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News”

#80

Post by christophilus » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

hiccuphippo wrote: post #59

shittyadmin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't mind the lack of comment reply notifications because I find that it makes conversations less aggressive than on sites like reddit which do that. Less of a feeling of a mandated reply, more opportunities for other users to speak up on your behalf.

The main reason I'd like that functionality is so I can read the responses. Sometimes karma changes are an indicator you got responses but not always.

Click your username-> comments, and you get above list of your comments, ordered by time. I think it’s perfect. I don’t like having little notification icons everywhere.