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

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

#81

Post by christophilus » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

nothis wrote: post #71

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 bottom half of the page would be covered by a popover that says, “Please download the mobile app. Pretty please?” And it would pop on your screen every time you view a new page.

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

#82

Post by vinceguidry » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

BOBOTWINSTON wrote: post #58

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.

If someone engages with me near the post time on Reddit, then I have no issues ignoring them or responding respectfully. If someone counterpoints something I wrote 30+ days ago... nobody else is reading so it is now a cage match.

I like Quora for this. The threat of a BNBR ding is eternal and the panopticon unwavering. As a result every interaction becomes an opportunity for reflection.

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

#83

Post by yitchelle » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #73

hiccuphippo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One server, probably < $100/month

Are they any full time admins/mods of HN? Probably wrong, I get the feeling those who moderates are doing it during their idle time while working at YC?

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

#84

Post by aequitas » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #20

jermaink wrote: post #13

HN is a perfect example of an classic, evergreen product. Or call it a crocodile product, as crocodiles are somewhat location-loyal. Are there more examples of products that did (on purpose) not change significantly? If you consider the sentiment on the recent GMail redesign, Facebook, .. it often appears that product managers are the only ones that want to change the product and its appeal. I think Reddit also had t…

In the Netherlands an early very (1998) popular web page is http://www.startpagina.nl , and it's still popular with non-tech savvy people. http://www.nu.nl (1999) is the country's most popular news page, http://www.marktplaats.nl (1999) the most popular Craig's list / Ebay equivalent. They have all tweaked their UI over two decades if you look closely but make sure they look more or less the same as ever. Actually Te…

https://www.gratiz.nl/ (1996) also never changed its winning recipe.

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

#85

Post by anothergoogler » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

alzoid wrote: post #4

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…

I agree. The only changes I would make to the UX is a larger font by default and make the visited links a different colour. I find it hard to easily see what I visited when looking at the list.

Here's a vote for a smaller font, I browse at 90%. Font size on mobile is good though.

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

#86

Post by combatentropy » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

whostolemyhat wrote: post #53

nothrabannosir wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier than the [-] next to each comment? If you have javascript enabled, they should show up. Not sure how it could be improved?

It's tiny and right next to a couple of other links, so very difficult to press on mobile.

That's a miniature game embedded in the mobile version of the site.

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

#87

Post by jeremy7600 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

And I'm still the only one in the last two jobs I've had that even knew of this sites existence, which he aptly points out in his tweet about the value of Reddit vs "Startup News".

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

#88

Post by thinkingemote » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:28 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…

I'd only improve how it works on mobile devices, specifically making the collapse buttons [-] wider and some links larger. Just to make it easier to use for fatter fingers.

I wrote a firefox extension to do this for me, bit buggy but it helps a lot.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by personlurking » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

asaph wrote: post #8

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…

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.

5. And tagging.

I'd like to remove technical posts from my front page, since I'm not technical. Either I'd like to follow certain tags and only see content related to them, or at least be able to mark tags I don't want to see.