What life improving event or practices you started after reading a HN thread?
It has also exposed me to concepts that I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. For example, I was introduced to Lisp through Clojure in part through this site. This exposure to other ideas is pretty awesome, since it helps me get a more nuanced picture of the tech world. In my C++ class I have a teacher who preaches object oriented programming as the most revolutionary idea since the wheel (which you can model with object oriented programming..) while online I'm exposed to the many advocates of functional and even event driven programming. I could give more examples.
I think some people might find these things to be inconsequential. I mean, it isn't getting a job or a wife. However, these little things are constantly adding up to more intelligent decisions which are leading to other wise choices. I think it qualifies.
I think that I can safely say that Hacker News has made me a slightly wiser person.
Oh, and god willing I'll be able to get an internship through contacts on Hacker News. Wish me luck. =)
Any particular reason for asking it again?
What is different about the questions you ask and the ones that get responses?
How can you make your questions more like theirs?
Ultimately, just throw up a lot of crap and see what sticks. Then improve on what sticks.
However, I think you're missing out on a huge upside. You are judged by your best works not your failures.
The problem with studying the success of others is that you're not doing anything. I would know, I spent 2 years doing it and had nothing to show for it.
When I say throw up a lot of crap, what I really mean is throw up good enough stuff to validate the idea. Then go from there. It maybe painful, but it works. It certainly isn't slow. I can throw up an outline of 5 blog posts and say, "Which one do you want to read?" and then write the post everyone likes. Or I can study how the best bloggers do it and start tomorrow(which never comes).
In this case, I really think my impetus to immediately post and start asking questions is probably a bad one, a premature impetus. It will be better for me to do some of the legwork before posting and requesting feedback. I'm not a patient person. :-) So I don't really want to wait. But I think it is best, not just because I am not in a good place mentally today but for other reasons as well.