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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

For a little bit there, I would write a blog post whenever I solved a problem that took me more than a few hours to solve. I can’t tell you how many times I have referenced my own post about self-signing local certificates. It’s been a great resource for myself when the problems recur, and I should honestly get back into the habit. It’s worth it just for reference.

I’ve had a couple opinion posts go viral here and elsewhere over the years, and while I found it really exciting, it’s weird how the negativity sticks with you. There was a particularly mean comment probably ten years ago that I still think about when I can’t sleep.

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We’ll I think you’re great and that other person is a poopy head.

yeah, 1 negative comment sticks in your head more than 100 positive ones. Not sure what the actual psychological explanation for that is but it's true in my experience

I don't remember if it has a name, but the theory is that there's more of an evolutionary advantage to remembering and avoiding bad things, because one significant enough bad event takes you out of the gene pool.

I shouldn't ask but I wonder what the comment was. There's a weird individuality to internet comments. We all read the same comments and sometimes walk away with a meaning that only matters to us, which we rarely share with others. I wonder, should there be second order discussions about public comments?

It wasn't even that pointed. I don't remember the exact wording but the comment was basically someone telling me I had no right to criticize a language's choices until I'd written a compiler myself.

It's is clearly nonsense, the same kind of logic as people who hate movie critics, but it's gotten a rent-free place in my head for years now.

Something just about the tone of the comment made it stick in my brain.

Well in case it helps, yes that's complete nonsense. Of course languages can be criticised, by anyone, just like everything else. That's how they improve.

I guess by that logic the person shouldn't be criticising your criticism of the language until they've tried criticising the language themselves .

Makes me wonder if the person who made the comment had themselves written a compiler, or, as I suspect, not.

A few days ago someone got confused by traffic patterns and shouted angrily at me from his car window. He was in the wrong, but still it sticks in my mind. I wish there was a way to have some meta discussion about situations like that without it inevitably being interpreted as a petty continuation of the first-order conflict.

Agreed, this is exactly the same approach I take with my blog.

I see something cool or spend some time figuring out something, I write it down.

I used to write Gists for those things, but I ended to turning Gist into a pseudo database and built my blog to use it as a backend.

Yeah I relate to this so hard

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