IT Communities like Hacker News are full of assholes
philliphaydon.com
philliphaydon.com
My highest rated comments/posts are the most controversial, sarcastic ones that over-analyze the OP's post. My lowest rated ones are the most technical, discussion-based ones that I initially sought from HN.
There's always going to be good and bad examples of people in HN, but let's all not forget: whether it's the minority or the majority, even one person can change your opinion. And in my opinion, the majority of HN commenters are way too "Apple does this" or "Microsoft does that" or "It doesn't run Linux, eff off."
As an electrical engineer, my only concern is "does it work, and does it work well?" And it's those few people who are asking those technical or philosophical questions that keep me coming back here.
I rather think that those who can are quiet about it. As Yeats said, the worst are full of passionate intensity. The people who can take a joke chuckle and keep reading.
HN is the most reasonable of all other communities (as in browser-based / web) i've ever been part of.
Politeness still (?) seems to be the majority and snarky comments are frowned upon and as a result, downvoted quickly..
So you've written an article and some people have disagreed with you and some have written a response that wasn't exactly constructive? Well, in all honesty, i haven't read neither your article nor the responses to it - but the few examples you quoted make you assume all of HN is made up of a-holes? :(
There's also a certain bluntness that is appreciate by some for its directness and lack of pomp but (mis)interpreted by others as rudeness or hating.
I've seen comments that begin with, "That's an absurd idea", followed by a clear explanation of why the idea is absurd, with replies from people complaining that no one should call an idea absurd because it was not nice.
It's a big world.
Hyperbole much?
The author complains about people making biased sweeping statements, then makes biased sweeping statements about HN and the "IT Community", whatever that is.
"People need to stop being so negative towards others in the community" doesn't jibe with "[t]he IT Community is a joke[.]"
If you find yourself writing "The [whatever] community ..." you should pause to ask yourself just how you happen to know so much about so many different people.
Frankly though, people around here are generally as reasonable as you'll find out on the interwebs. Sure you'll have people come in and stir things up, but generally I get the sense that the majority of comments and their authors are attacking the question at hand as opposed to the person behind it, and are doing so in a respectful way. The internet as currently constructed will never be perfect in that regard because of the lack of accountability, but Hacker News in general seems to move against the general stream and have some sense of decency, the way that say, early EBay is often described as having.
For the Plato reference by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges
I think HN has the highest quality comments of any tech-related forum site. There are consistently tons and tons of great comments from people that are very well-informed.
Reddit sometimes have a lot of very great comments, because of their reach they can get comments from a lot of experts on a wide variety of topics. But it also has a lot more noise, and a lot of "joke" posts, something that HN actively discourages, and which keeps the signal-to-noise ratio high.
EVERY forum is going to be filled with trolls and assholes. HN certainly has its share, but I would say for the most part, the signal-to-noise ratio is the highest. This is the reason why I left Slashdot after being a member for so long.
Ultimately, the world is partially populated by arseholes. Most meeting places in the world, both online and off have their share of arseholes.
Arseholes do have a habit of speaking both more frequently and louder than "average" citizens, but ultimately, that's life. Seriously, toughen up and move on. Maybe try reading HN more is actually the best solution to desensitise yourself if you find such things disturbing.
And maybe someone could find a good way to get the Clint Eastwood line in...
Evidence enough that this person isn't familiar with the majority of contributors to HN.
I don't know if I really agree with this, groups have track records. There can certainly be real disadvantages to hitching your cart to one particular horse, especially if it's one that you have known to have bitten you in the past.
It all depends on what one wants to do with it.
It seems he just is insulted because his worldview is targeted in a totally reasonable manner, his argument
> Yes C# is created by Microsoft, does that make C# bad? No. Does it mean you shouldn't learn it? No.
has exactly the same tone. I don't get what the problem is.
The people on HN can get "meta" really fast, a lot of people are not used to that. If you state a public opinion it's never in a vacuum.
No they're not.
Instead, the communities are full of amazingly helpful and polite individuals, and also have a small population of assholes. (Some of the communities. I mean something like Hacker News in particular, not 4chan.)
But a small percentage of the participants in those communities are not so helpful, or somehow manage to offend others while providing commentary they think will be helpful. And it only takes a small percentage.
The best solution is probably social pressure: speaking up when you see a comment that does not represent the quality of discussion that you want from the community. (But beware the other danger of filling the boards with meta-discussion about what is and isn't and appropriate way to discuss, because that will QUICKLY kill the quality of the community.)
I like to read through comments on threads like that and appreciate the importance of an awesome community.
I am weary about non open source dev tools lately. I was burned pretty badly by MS when the killed managed directx and said - learn XNA. Or all those guys with silverlight experience or the ones that knew flash and become hostage of the Apple/Adobe war. The moment some other entity can kill the technology that you make your living with you are in a trouble.
The decision to adopt new MS tech is like a Russian roulette. So I don't see any of the comments as assholery.
You run into assholes all day long, and you're the asshole.
Yes, maybe you should lead by example.
When it comes to Microsoft, their motivation is just what they made their motto way back when: a PC in every home, running Microsoft Windows. To me that has always been a threat, and combined with the tactics they employed it's not something that can be glossed over. Some things you just don't forget or forgive if you're worth anything at all. I don't mean to pick on Microsoft though, they're a dime a dozen... but that doesn't make them worth a damn, it just gives them something they might delude themselves into being able to hide behind.
I hope that helped.
I'm not sure why. Sometimes I hear people talk about self-effacing behaviour as a type of false modesty, but I have no real opinion on whether that explains it.
Personally, I find Hacker News to be very useful and constructive. I've been reading it for less than a year, and I'm very grateful for all the interesting posts and comments people make.
So - thanks all! Move on to the next, more constructive, post...
RS
OTOH, if someone bothers you, you can ignore them or, if you feel talkative, calmly explain why you find their behaviour unacceptable. You can set the tone.
Simply saying that a community is "full of assholes" is... well, not very constructive.
A con is "OH, runs only on MS plattforms" compared to Python,Ruby,Java/Clojure/Scala,Node and mostly everything else. Not sure why he can't see this as a legitimate problem.
From inside the .NET world perhaps the world only needs to be run on MS.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are wrong here. It does make it bad. One should learn from history. When language is encumbered with shady copyrights and patents (yes yes, I don't think something like that should ever be patentable / copyrightable, but in practice the broken system allows it), there is always a risk it'll become a potential problem. Look at what happened to Java with Oracle's attack on Google. It's good that Google was able to brush it off, but not everyone has the same resources to do it. Yes, Microsoft "promised" they won't do something like that. But do you trust their promises? And does that promise extend to anyone who can acquire Microsoft's "rights" on C# tomorrow?
So to put it shortly - better stick to truly free languages without some weird IP strings attached. Luckily there are enough of them around.
Plus, even if Microsoft did do something to make C# not viable anymore that makes Microsoft bad, not the language. For instance, if someone came along with a patent claim that somehow shut down the viability of one of your free languages, does that make the language itself bad?
Now, based on the concerns you bring up there is a valid debate over whether C# is a good choice for the future, but not whether it's a bad language. You could easily say that C# is a good language but I wouldn't use it because of reasons A and B.
There are several aspects that can be analysed, yes, vendor is one, and other aspects.
The world is not black or white, people can legitimately pick C# based on its merits and capabilities as it may be the best solution for them.
In this case, I explained the reason. Microsoft is too entrenched in intellectual property assertion, and therefore they didn't make C# free. It's not the fault of the language or language designers. It's the fault of Microsoft. So if someone says don't use C# because it's made by MS - they are right, but they should explain what it means.
I think that self regulate much of HN comments, and you think twice before being an asshole (if you know about that..).
Ain't innate primate behavior a bitch?