The business logic in encoded into the original structure, making migration to anything different effectively impossible - without some massive redesign.
This, I think more than any response, indicates why the philosophy of “it’s working don’t touch it” will always win and new features” requests will be rejected.
HN didn’t depaginate based on user desires, it was based on internal tooling making that feature available within the context of the HN overall structure.
HN has zero financial or structural incentive to do anything but change as little as possible. That’s why this place, unique in the internet at this point unfortunately has lasted.
HN is not *trying* to grow, it’s trying to do as little as possible while staying alive; so by default, it’s more coherent to maintain because its structure isn’t built for it and changing the structure would break the encoded rituals (anti-abuse measures).
Something to think about when you’re trying to solve for many problems like “legacy code” “scaling needs” etc… it all comes back to baseline incentives