I have to admit that I'm not familiar with this problem. I mean, I understand if we're taking about those forms where you get 20 minutes of half an hour, but it seems to me that you are talking about those cases where you get a few days or a week.
This makes me think you might be in that small space where you are a decent programmer, but still don't have enough experience to be confident.
If that's the case, don't worry, it gets easier in time, at least in my case it did.
Even though I have an account for years now, I just recently got hooked on HN. I still don't have an estimate on how much time I spend on it, but I don't even care. Ok, I use it as a news aggregator and I'll probably forget about most of it in a few days, weeks or whatever, but more importantly, I use it to find out about resources too.
Resources for learning and for my job in general, for my own products or for my day job. I think it currently might be one of best places to stay informed and on top of latest technologies.
I don't think HN and Facebook belong in the same category here, at least not for most of people. Somebody can still use Facebook to get informed about the technology, but most people don't.
> Resources for learning and for my job in general, for my own products or for my day job.
I agree with you on this. However, when I need resources to learn about a topic, I have found it more effective to just go to the HN Algolia search [1], and look for the most voted links for that topic.
For example, if I want resources on React, I would search "react" filtered by "past year" on Algolia [2]
I find this approach more effective because I dont have to be constantly following all the stories on HN, and keep bookmarking the resources I find useful.
Actually, that reply was very much typical of HN culture. In fact, it was quite kind for HN. There was no "you're an idiot" aspect to it. (By that I mean he gave you information, minus much in the way of warm fuzzy social stuff. If you are looking for lots of gushy personal contact, you are in the wrong place. If you are looking for intellectual stimulation and high level discussion, you may have found your new home.)
The site is a discussion forum aimed at tech people and potential entrepreneurs. It is part of the business model for YC in that (last I checked) you needed a handle here to apply to YC, a start-up incubator that provides seed money and all kinds of education and what not for nascent companies wanting to hit it big who have the potential to be the next AirBnB. YC is, in fact, where AirBnB got its start.
Last stats I saw: It is predominantly male, sometimes thought to be as much as 97% male, though I think that is probably an exaggeration, and the bulk of the members are mostly in their 20s and 30s, though ages range from early childhood to at least 80s, last time I saw an onsite survey.
The intent is to discuss things that are intellectually engaging. It has a few other aspects, like Show HN, that support the general interest in supporting web-based businesses just starting out.
I suggest you look around, do some reading and not jump to conclusions about people replying to you.
Edit: YC is short for Y-Combinator, if you want to google the name of the incubator and get additional info. I don't seem to have spelled that out at any point, though I had intended to do so.
>Last stats I saw: It is predominantly male, sometimes thought to be as much as 97% male, though I think that is probably an exaggeration, and the bulk of the members are mostly in their 20s and 30s, though ages range from early childhood to at least 80s, last time I saw an onsite survey.
Is there a place to find these surveys?. I was lurking on your blog a bit:)
I am terrible at finding things on HN. There is a search function at the bottom of the site and there have been surveys performed in the past on site that asked for things like age (and sometimes other things, like religion). I have provided all the raw data I know of regarding gender on my blog (linked in my profile, as you likely know). I know of nothing formal, rigorous, etc. But I believe I have seen more than one age survey over the years.
I have been here on and off something like 6 years. This is just what I remember seeing off the top of my head at various points in time. And my memory is certainly not 100% reliable (it used to be a lot better than it is these days, nearly but not quite "photographic" for some things, but that was some years back).
There is also "Ask HN" section, original question would be a good example for it. You would put "Ask HN: " in front of your title and it would go to that section.
Ok I like programming and got here by researching what agar.io's backend was. Also I wondered why the domain wasn't hackernews, thanks for letting me know!
Very close to this definition, but probably in the middle, think about Map/Reduce, think about parallel computing models, think about indexing, searching and many other things which are related to architecting, designing and optimizing how things work
It's a generally good way to learn something through available resources (which are accessible as never before), do an Open Source project of your own and then look for a junior position to apply and widen that knowledge.
I totally agree with you and also think a good approach is to start with asking the offender if he can help with explaining his code to me so I can understand it well enough so I can change it. Maybe also during the talk ask how he managed to test his code. If I am lucky this will make him understand why it is good to have solid code that others can understand and change without his help. This way I am not directly saying that his code is bad, I am saying I am not able to understand it leaving a possibility that it is me there is a problem with. If the code was written more than 2 days ago he will probably also start having problems with understanding exactly what it do.
This makes me think you might be in that small space where you are a decent programmer, but still don't have enough experience to be confident.
If that's the case, don't worry, it gets easier in time, at least in my case it did.