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Comment by gallerdude | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why the other comments are being so negative, this is awesome. There's a Jony Ive quote along the lines of "when you build something, you get the actual thing, but even more valuable is how you've grown and changed from building that thing.

Best of luck on your future projects, great on you to make awesome stuff and grow as a person!

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I think those negative commenters tend to miss what in my opinion is the most critical ingredient of what being a true "hacker" is – doing some things just because you want to, because you're having fun and because you want to see where it may lead. It breeds creativity and original ideas.

A silly idea in the beginning may turn out to not be so silly in the end.

I've been doing a similar thing where I build lots of different SAAS type projects, lots of them will go nowhere, but what I have learned about design, abstraction, and trade-offs is enormous. Definitely worth the time to do something like this. One of my first priorities in hiring someone is to see if they have side projects where they learn things unconstrained by the normal grind of daily professional life.

Well it’s inevitable that the culture of a community is going to drift as it grows. We even have a name for the effect in the hacker community: Eternal September.

I also think the negativity may be reflective of the mood of society overall. This has been a very tough year for so many people. When people are having a tough time I think they can latch on to one of their pet peeves and use it to blow off some steam. We just need to be careful as a community that we don’t allow the discussion to devolve into a toxic flame war. Our tireless moderator dang has been tremendous at that thus far.

> I don't understand why the other comments are being so negative, this is awesome.

This is the contrarian dynamic at work: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

The first posts in a thread are usually negative because negative reactions are the easiest to feel and fastest to write. Also, most internet comments are objections to something, and when the thread is blank, the only thing there to object to is the article.

After that, other comments show up to object to the objections. These tend to get upvoted, and that explains the paradox of why so often the top comment says something like "I don't understand why everyone here is so negative".

The main thing to understand is that this has nothing to do with the topic! It's a generic effect of the forum mechanism and group psychology.

In one comment you said that the contrarian dynamic works on HN threads and to internet comments in general.

I just went and opened 10 random Reddit threads on the front page to read the top comments, and found only 2 where this was true, and 8 where this was totally false, most notably [1].

The main reason for negative comments here on HN (IMO) is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People have learned that usually the #1 comment is a negative one, so you have a bunch of people "competing" to be #1 by trying to nitpick whatever is wrong with the original article (even if there is none) in hope to win the popularity contest.

This is why I've seen some friends recently leave HN (their exact words: "couldn't hand the toxicity"). I hope that you, as a Head of Growth, can actively work to break this cycle.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/jw8xbe/if_w...

We should start referring to dang as Head of Growth - The Growthhead for short. Sort of like a Fountainhead but with more growth than fountain.

I agree, This was a fun read. I also think this is a really excellent way to gain some experience, do something fun, and potentially hit on a big idea.

I can definitely see the excitement of creating something small but semi-viral on the internet

Yeah I bet generally that doing 12 different thing and in year and then pivot best one fields better outcome than grinding one thing.

It's good that he built some side projects and seems like he learned a lot. And the process and write ups are entertaining, but I understand some of the negativity. He comes off as peak tech bro, instead of talking about how he's making the projects for fun or for learning everything is about monetizing or getting views on (admittedly!) poor quality hackathon projects. Dialing down some of the tech bro and the focus on making "products" and I believe the negativity would go away. It doesn't help that his idea process seems to be "what can I make that is like something else, but significantly worse" :). I think it's a great achievement in rapid development, however

What is your definition of “tech bro”? The post comes off to me as someone who is humble, introspective, interested in technology, interested in testing out new ideas, and interested in getting better. Not sure what’s “tech bro” about any of that, but maybe that means I’m a tech bro, bro! /joke

You're right, it appears that tech bro is insulting to the HN audience. Too late to delete or edit my comment, but maybe future readers can ignore the offensive parts of the post. I still stand by the focus on product and selling for projects that were largely about learning could lead to negative comments. I attempted to get some balance in my original comment but it seems like using tech bro negated any of that

No offense taken here! I asked from a place of trying to learn what you meant. Part of why I like HN is because I can find posts that go deep in the technical aspects of things, posts that delve more into the product/business side of things, and lots of stuff in between. I think I understand the spirit of your original reply better now!

“Nobody thinks they’re a techbro, it’s always someone else who’s the problem.”

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/me-neither

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