Yeah, that's the HN "anti-clickbait" feature that (amongst others) removes the "How" from titles like "How we managed to run Doom on a mechanical typewriter", but in this case it doesn't make sense at all...
If anything, it made it more clickbait-y due to being an unusual title.
Yes, it's imperfect that way.
How does removing the word "how" make a title less of a clickbait?
"I made 40,000 dollars in a week with one simple trick" is exactly as bad as "How I made 40,000 dollars in a week with one simple trick"
It removes repetition and imitation. To avoid a frontpage list full of "why I rewrote ___ in rust" , ,"how I use rust for filing my taxes", "how I switched from braille to rust"
I sort of get it, but overall I still get the impression this particular filter is hurting more than it helps.
Samba was written …instead of vibe-coded. ;)
There should be luminaries to whom this does not apply, and tridge is certainly among that small pantheon.
I would say in this case it makes it enigmatic.
Rehowed. Thank you!
At least we know it wasn't passed down orally.
...by a French waiter
The title is actually “How Samba was written”.
Rehowed. Thank you!
@dang original title is “How Sambas Was Written”, which makes more sense
Rehowed. Thanks!
it was indeed
Another win for the HN title-munging rules.
From the creators of “I met your mother” and “Green was my valley”.
That's very good!
Are they using something like 's/^[Hh]ow (to )?//' ?
I think so. Sometimes a mod comes and fixes it up afterwards but it's kind of inconsistent.
Submitters can also edit the title themselves after submitting.
Samba
In my defense, this joke was funnier when the HN title was “Samba Was Written”