Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What HN posts inspired or changed your perspective the most?

52 pointshungle924 comments

Hi HN, I’ve been reflecting on how some ideas—sometimes from just a single post—can really change how we live, work, or think. I'm curious:

What’s one Hacker News post (or discussion) that genuinely inspired you or shifted your mindset in a meaningful way?

Whether it's a technical insight, a founder’s story, a lifestyle choice, or a random rabbit hole—I'd love to read it. Bonus if you can share how it affected you.

Thanks for sharing!

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This [0] comment and discussion under it about how non technical businesses are very rarely run by technical people, and how if you apply your technical skills to such a business it can be a force multiplier.

Well, it so happened that my partner had started a small sourdough bakery the year before. I was thinking about investing in it. This comment provided some of the inspiration and now a few years later we're both working on it full time, we have three cafe branches, one production facility, 25 staff, thinking about opening another branch in a neighboring city. Our skills complement each other - she's great at baking and HR, I'm better at developing business processes, managing the tooling, researching equipment, making sure things are properly documented. We're both crap at marketing, but somehow we get by!

My old career as a graphics dev feels like a distant memory, but I do keep my skills sharp and might go back to it in the future.

It has by no means been an easy ride for me, I am forced to juggle a ton of jobs and many of them are way outside my comfort zone. But at the same time, I'm creating something in the real world, and providing employment for 25 people, whom I do my best to make sure are treated well and given a decent place to work. This feels far more impactful than my graphics work ever was.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24099409

> My old career as a graphics dev feels like a distant memory

What is a "graphics dev"?

3d graphics programming

I was struggling to get a job with 1 year of experience under a belt, then I read this comment [0] by vmception

> vmception on Dec 15, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: How to Stand Out with Your Job Application as a Ju...

> 7. Form an LLC and lie about your experience as you worked for this company for so long. This joker recruiter is an inconsequential gatekeeper, you need to be forwarded to the technical interview that you have to pass no matter how big your open source contributions are. There are many popular developers whose libraries get used by large organizations, yet cannot get hired by them due to the brainteasers.

> All you need is the callback so forget the reindeer games described in this article.

I added one year of experience to my CV and started recruiting for mid positions. Got a job offer in two weeks, after previously spending many months going nowhere.

Thank you!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29570736

> I added one year of experience to my CV and started recruiting for mid positions. Got a job offer in two weeks, after previously spending many months going nowhere.

Did you create a fictitious LLC and added a fake year of employment?

A number of posts made me realise the ratio of comment to post is toxic unless you understand yourself very clearly.

I now routinely delete posts on reflection, and I post a lot less than I used to, and I try to find interesting material to submit instead because I feel it is better to encourage input by being "productive" for want of a better word, than to fall into a semi constant sin of sniping, devils-advocating, well-actually..ing.

I'm not saying it made me happier, but I am certainly happer than I used to be. I have also applied this promiscuously across other social media (yes, this is one) online.

6 weeks before my son turned 4, I read a post here recommending the book 'Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons'.

Since three months after his 4th birthday, he's been an avid reader, which has unlocked opportunities for joy/entertainment and for curiosity/learning.

Reading has also increased his spoken vocabulary. I know because a couple of times I've heard him use a word correctly but pronounce it incorrectly.

made an account just to add to this. I did this workbook with my son the summer between K and 1st. every night we did a single lesson and his teachers were flabbergasted as he breezed through the spelling and reading curriculum for the entire year in the first month. the rest of the year he was allowed to choose books from the library while the others did assigned readings and he’s reading somewhere between 3rd and 4th grade level without any additional “study.”

the book provides a literal script for the parent to read, like inline code comments, which took a lot of the overhead out of it on my side. heart melting hearing him say his favorite gift/summer memory was “my dad teaching me to read!”

I won't find the post, but the advice I read here that worked for me was something like : "If you want to do a project and are scared of the size, just start and see how far you can go".

This really lifted the pressure off. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work in the end, just see how far you can go. It's really simple.

This allowed me to launch a product, make a few thousand bucks from it, and then fold it, cause it wasn't such a good idea.

This same advice allowed me to finish the 1st version of a screenplay I wanted to write. I am in the 2nd version now. We'll see where it goes.

Someone posted a link to a blog that I can now no longer find that broke down the cost of nuclear power and showed that even at 0$ cost for power generation it wasn’t competitive and that solar is dirt cheap in comparison. Really changed my perspective. The same thing with blog posts on energy grid, peak load and power source management. This sort of discussion never seems to hit mainstream.

That sounds interesting. What a pity cannot find the link.

Hmm, I don't think I can tie anything back to 1 post. In most cases I probably assimilated the information and promptly forgot the source. I've also internalized things before not realizing how important they are until much later when finding the source is hard/impossible.

I can say that HN has had an incredible impact on my life. From being a place to debate/discuss technology and technology-related concepts to a source of news that has given me a edge (IMHO). Even at work I feel starved for that (not enough time and/or people interested in it) but here you can always find a topic to talk about and geek-out on.

I am certain there are core personality traits that I picked up or honed due to comments made on this site, I just can't point to a specific one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43773813

This post changed my view on how UI/UX of AI tools should be. It also somehow triggered "the urge to build something" inside me.

This comment by hoppityboppity pretty much changed my whole perspective on things and made me realize I've pretty much wasted my professional life:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33452920

It rings more true than ever. The really important computing nowadays is all done on the GPU; the CPU is little more than a front-end processor. Furthermore, with AI and LLMs we're rapidly converging on a future where programming won't even resemble programming as we know it. If you're young and talented, the time to get ahead of the game is NOW. I am no longer young, so I will probably be one of the ones left behind.

I'm not young but I'm optimistic about the future :) when horses were replaced by cars, bunch of new industries was created. I wholeheartedly believe we will see this happen with code generation.

On a side note I like writing code, I think I'm not alone. Who knows, maye ol'good internet will be reborn?

I personally know somebody who posted in 'who wants to be hired' and was picked by good Samaritan here on HN. This changed my perspective, I was sceptical anybody on hiring side reads the 'who wants to be hired'. I started to read them after this happened (I'm not on hiring side but I share posts that catch eye)

Derek Sivers Below Average

https://sive.rs/below-average

The most inspiring post I've seen here is SketchLab (2022).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32294388

I know why, but it’s too personal to say it here. But I can say that it’s on the same list I have Skecthpad (1963) in.

https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

"The purpose of charity is to end the need for charity"

IIRC, paraphrasing a quote from u/chubot, or someone very much like them.

My personal prime motivator is something like:

   Help people help themselves.
   And help those who can't.

And yet I largely remain unquestioningly committed to most social services (private, public, personal).

If I'm really devoted to feeding the hungry, for instance, I should always remember the proper goal is to end hunger (outright).

Even if that goal is unattainable. Maybe because that goal is unattainable. Which leads to a deeper inspection of the root causes, moral foundations, social context, etc.

It's just so easy to get caught up in the immediate necessity and lose site of root causes.

No particular post. I like HN's grab-bag aspect, there's something for everyone. Peeking your interest about things you hadn't heard of before, or get a new angle on something.

Beats all the "Trump did X, popstar married gf" crap out there.

> Beats all the "Trump did X, popstar married gf" crap out there.

No doubt, HN is one of the best resources for tech and tech adjacent topics. It has all sorts of people ranging from the experts to beginners. Also, tech is one of the easiest thing to provide proof or refute (Ofcourse subjective debates lik vim vs emacs, formatting, best practices exists for fun). So, the quality of discussions on those topics are high.

When HN posts deviate and gets into murky discussions like (geo)politics it gets ugly too. The title may not be "Trump did X" but the content on those related issues is not too far from that on other forums.

I don't think HN crowd and discussions are immune to the crap found on other forums, it's just the theme and majority of topics that reach front page are resistant and have less scope for ugly discussions.

That said, I'm not discounting the effort put in by everyone and the mods to keep the discussion clean but in the end we are all people and (hopefully) not AI bots and that shows sometimes.

- I was most influenced by HN threads on books. I read dozens of books based on HN recommendations. This tangibly, concretely changed my life in a small way. I found authors like Neal Stephenson, Greg Egan, Hofstadter, etc. from HN. I am forever thankful. Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and it thoroughly changed my life (as one element, not the sole thing). Just search "ask hn books", ans you will see ~30/40 threads with high quality recommendations.

- MOOCs recommended on HN threads are fantastic. I spent hundreds of hours on MOOCs recommended here. Same goes for textbooks. Other people’s lists I found posted here are also great. Like Mark Saroufim, Susan Rigetti, etc. I now have a really high threshold quality for tech/math books. I read SICP, Little Schemer, Steven Strogatz among many great books. There are threads on tech books, MOOCs, especially those posted during pandemics.

- I learned about the fast.ai MOOC here, and projects I did from the MOOC helped me land my first Deep Learning job. I was a Physics undergrad.

- There is higher quality of discourse where the standard is high. This put things into perspective, and made me much more confident and capable. Like, just learning a new language in a week- if you think this is normal to most people who do software, you are wrong.

- HN posts links to direct judgements, court filings, papers, etc. Now for all areas of my life, I look for the direct source- read new laws, past tax treaties, papers etc. I prefer it over reading blogs or newpaper reports.

- HN is actually diverse. I, for the first time in my life, encountered sane Right Wing here on HN. I am from India, and all American social media were biased towards one direction, and the RW discourse was kind of eh, not smart. Maybe Quora had a small faction of smart RW. Having smart RW sources to read and learn from makes me a well-rounded person. English is not my first language, and I jumped into social media without any supervision when I was 13. So, take that into account. All American social media was a particular side's echo-chamber. That was eyebrow raising and squint-demanding from even a 16 yo me.

- I see many on HN working with electronics, Math, AI as hobbies/side projects. That has directly inspired me to do the same in my life.

- There are a lot of people here who have families, a home, focus on friends, a job/business- helps me striving towards those. Before, there was a distorted view of consumer/hedonism/activism focused adult life focused on money, extremely strong opinions, bragging about achievements, etc. From the outside HN might seem like a startup/money focused forum for a certain "kind", but it has the highest concentration of diverse smart people in my experience. No other forum has so many meditators, electronics-tinkerer-for-fun, Math-obsessed-for-fun, etc. I started meditating ~4 years back based on a comment that recommended Mind Illuminated book. HN played an important role in my coming-of-age.

Thank you, HN!

nice share!

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