But that boring web app doesn't even have pretty fonts.

It even has a "next" button, so you can see more than 30 posts, who needs that?

It shows the point count in a smaller greyer font, instead of a big circle, so I can't instinctively choose posts by popularity instead of their headlines.

It doesn't even pull up a random image from the article that might not have anything to do with the actual topic, and display it along with a preview of text, so I can't get distracted and pulled by fundamentally more attractive colorful pictures instead of boring text topics.

It's not written in the newest JavaScript framework, it's just plain old HTML, some simple CSS and Racket making it all run. Racket! That doesn't even have "JS" in its name. What is this, 2013?

Whoever wrote that version clearly doesn't know how Hacker News is meant to be viewed.

ahem

But seriously, the Hacker News site is one of my favorite "news" sites. Simple, clean, no distractions, just headlines.

Also, some of the websites listed in the article are quite useful, like the search engine. Most of the others are simply different ways of reading Hacker News, not "better". Might be better for some people. Not for me.

I was just about to say the same thing. A few years ago it was a bit annoying to read on mobile, but they eventually made some minor CSS tweaks which made it much better.

Performing certain actions, such as upvoting, require zooming in a lot in order to hit the desired arrow. I'd love to see that improved, but it's hardly a deal-breaker for me.

I'll add my voice to this echo-chamber too.

I've tried a few of the alternatives, but I always come back to the main HN site. A lot of the alternative sites are laggy; these either cache their DB fetches or simply only refresh on a schedule.

Right now the only thing I'd change, is move the Search box from the bottom of the page to the top - simply because I always forget it's there.

Actually, thought of a second one - a native RSS feed for the '/newist' page - I currently use the feed provided by HNRSS, but it's not realtime.

It's a very clean and easy to read site. The navigation is logical and visible and the text is easy to read. I'm very happy that is hasn't followed the current horrendous trend of large text, infinite scrolling, and no logical structure. I really dislike the current trend and find it a big leap backwards in usability.

I found the normal website really hard to use, and have tried using a bunch of third-party skins and userscripts and stuff to make it look better, but they all seemed even worse in some way.

Then i had a revelation and zoomed in 150%, now i'm perfectly happy with the normal site.