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Comment by adriftincode | Hacker News Reader

Why do people tag the year on articles? I feel like hackers cling to the “if it’s not new, it’s not worthy” paradigm.

Update: Thanks for all the replies, makes sense. Why downvote an honest question?

I wouldn't say it's about not being worthy, it's just very valuable context.

I'd say typically in software, once something is beyond about 5 years old - a library, a resource, a language version - it's very important to be aware of that as your decision to use that thing as-is needs to take that into consideration.

Maybe you decide to use it, maybe not, but you're always better off knowing when it was produced going in than not paying attention to that.

There's a difference between an honest question and the "I feel like hackers cling to the..." bit, which is an entirely unfair accusation. Not once have I seen a post negatively commented on just because of its age. Old posts are far more positively received here than elsewhere, and you'll often see a comment linking all previous posts because each time it's posted interesting discussion has come up which shouldn't be ignored.

There's plenty that's worthy and new-to-me even if it's years or decades old. We're sophisticated enough to recognize that but still find the context valuable.

In this case it’s because the title suggests something that’s not correct, that a Lisp book is in work today.

I didn't downvote but I don't think you're being downvoted for asking an honest question, but mostly because

> I feel like hackers cling to the “if it’s not new, it’s not worthy” paradigm.

is incorrect and reeks of an accusation of elitism which is not fair in this case.

I can see how it may have come off that way. It was my first thought as I’ve seen people get pretty exited about the new—rather than the old. Some thoughts are better kept to the self.

> as I’ve seen people get pretty exited about the new—rather than the old

Hardly a trait exclusive to hackers.

The title is worded in a way that it sounds recent. The title used is the article's summary, and the author saw fit to include the date at the time:

> In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp, and I agreed to write it.

It isn't less worthy if you're looking for an article about the book, but 2009 or 2019 is definitely relevant to whether I'm interested in reading it.

I updated the title to include the 2009 reference. Hope it is a bit clearer now. The notes themselves are from 2011.

Title was: "O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp, and I agreed to write it"

To your question re: why the downvotes (I wasn't one of them): it was an honest, but not very good, question. You essentially misunderstood the main focus of this site (Hacker News[1]) and asked, in a way that likely came across as pejorative (i.e. 'cling'), 'why are people so interested in the news at this news discussion site?'

[1]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/news

Some people cling to it more than others. The date is usually added for context around articles where context in terms of time matters (such as this one)

In addition to context, quite a few things end up getting reposted to HN after having already topped the list years earlier when they were new. That's fine, but you can get confused if the headline makes you think something happened twice.

Why attribute a "bad" reason to people in an honest question?

Tagging the year helps to contextualize articles for readers.

Look at the headline. There's a vast difference of implications it has when you append "now" to it, vs. "a decade ago".

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