The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

I can't believe I've been a HN user for 14 years. Things come and go but HN was one of the very very few web sites that I visited pretty much every day for this whole time. Except for rare hiking trip days.

It's also amazing how the spirit and the quality stay more or less the same here. I guess not all Eternal September effects are alike.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#5

Post by grinich » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

Here's what the HN homepage looked like on the day it launched (Ocb 9, 2006)

https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09

(Funny timing, I just discovered this feature yesterday.)

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#6

Post by b5 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

Interesting to see how stable the design of Hacker News has been. Here’s the earliest I c Ould find in the Wayback Machine – from 21st February, 2007: https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb...

Some changes – most notably the name – but you could easily mistake it for the current design at a glance.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#7

Post by mojuba » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

grinich wrote: post #5

Here's what the HN homepage looked like on the day it launched (Ocb 9, 2006) https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09 (Funny timing, I just discovered this feature yesterday.)

I love going back and reading predictions. Wired: The Desktop is Dead (2006) caught my eye: operating systems and processors will become irrelevant, it's all about network services and network storage now (according to Eric Schmidt anyway).

The lesson from this type of articles is usually that you can make linear extrapolations and look cool as an author, but not everything is linearly extrapolatable in a positive way. Trends continue linearly for a while, but so do problems that eventually require a major shake up. It's seeing the growing problems that's difficult.

Who would have thought before 2006 that the world doesn't need any more powerful and bulkier computers in their homes but instead, we'd need lightweight pocket computers that would put new requirements on energy efficiency of software for example? That operating systems won't go away but instead will take a whole new direction towards managed environments and more performant programming languages. Etc. etc.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#8

Post by tkinom » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

Love to know more about the HW and SW stacks that service HN.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#9

Post by akkartik » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

grinich wrote: post #5

Here's what the HN homepage looked like on the day it launched (Ocb 9, 2006) https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09 (Funny timing, I just discovered this feature yesterday.)

I believe that link just renders old data with the current style. We should go look in archive.org or something. I suspect your point still stands, though.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#10

Post by astrojams » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

mojuba wrote: post #4

I can't believe I've been a HN user for 14 years. Things come and go but HN was one of the very very few web sites that I visited pretty much every day for this whole time. Except for rare hiking trip days. It's also amazing how the spirit and the quality stay more or less the same here. I guess not all Eternal September effects are alike.

10 years for me. I still check it every day.