Yes, discussions on HN tend to bend towards the latter, but it's a useful counterbalance to the larger environment around technology.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
But I feel that it often isn't lived up to. I feel like I've seen a lot of criticisms here that add nothing of value. And even among the ones that do, they are often needlessly provocative. I shake my head every time I see a "I completely disagree" here. I mean sure, that's a fair thing to say, but I doubt it's true nearly as often as it's said. I think more often than not it's an ego-driven response. And that's just one example of what I perceive as a bit of a common, negative tone here.
But I'm not just jumping on the hating on HN bandwagon either. No place is going to be perfect. I find a lot of value here. There are some really thoughtful comments. Even some of the rude ones are sometimes informative. I'm not aware of a better community and I'm not sure if it's possible for this one to be better. It is what it is, as they say.
Unfortunately, that's as difficult to find on Hacker News as elsewhere. What we do get plenty of is aggressively ignorant hot takes and middlebrow dismissals and Dunning Krueger effects when the subject veers outside of the programming/CS wheelhouse. It's common enough that one might as well not even bother with the top subthread most of the time because it's bound to be the "this could have been trivially accomplished with FTP[0]" part of the conversation.