Reginald Braithwaite is a GitHubber
github.com
github.com
Congratulations, raganwald, and good call, Github. You're on a roll with hiring these days. :)
OT this is awesome. Congrats to both parties, obviously a great choice.
edit: I even really like resees. Goodness.
(function(){
var table = document.querySelector("table tbody tr+tr+tr td table tbody");
[].slice.call(table.querySelectorAll("tr")).map(function(r){var c=r.querySelector("td:last-child");return [c?parseFloat(c.innerHTML):0,r]}).sort(function(a,b){return b[0]-a[0]}).forEach(function(r){table.appendChild(r[1])});
}());I would imagine most people did it to submit comments/links.
Edit: It has to be pointed out that I was responding to a comment which said "Why on earth is this interesting enough for the greater HN community to care about?" which was in fact a rude thing to say.
Hacker News is an online community. It has a pretty open membership policy, which is that, if you show up here over a period of time, and manage to not get hell-banned, you're a part of the community. Congrats!
Part of being in a community is that it's pretty common to have a kinship with other people in that community. This place isn't a real-life place, so naturally, that kinship might not develop as quickly, or spread as deeply as one might in person. But you'd be surprised that it can still develop.
So, "the vast majority of HN users" might not actually know who raganwald is, but I'd bet they've probably seen at least a few of his comments, at least if they've spent any amount of time here. However, "the vast majority of HN users" aren't actually the community. There's nothing stopping them from being part of it, they just aren't. Which is fine (I don't consider myself to be, for what it's worth).
But when someone who is a part of the community has something good happen to them that's of interest to the community, people share it.
The fact that this story is popular is a triumph of community, not a shitty side-effect of this place not operating the way you wish it did. I hope it continues to feel this way, lest it really turn into a shitty link aggregator that you so wish it were.
Noting last paragraph of this top 10 profile:
Was there ever any claim that "we are all equal" here or something like that?
"How are stories ranked?
On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way."
I know it's an algorithm but I just feel from observation that that statement from the faq is not entirely correct.
You've been around longer (and have quite a bit of karma) so I'd like to know your thoughts on this. Because to me I don't see ranking on the home page following this faq answer.
And what does it mean to flag anyway? It's possible someone thinks that it is "read later" and another person "this is wrong".
How does anyone know what flag even is for exactly?
From the guidelines > Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.
Yes, Hacker News is an echo chamber.
I know who he is and I'm hardly a member of any exclusive in-group.
I also didn't know he lived in Toronto, for some reason I assumed he lived in San Francisco.
I also didn't know about Homoiconic - and now there is a treasure trove of lots of wonderful programming (largely Ruby stuff from what I am seeing) articles that I can go through one by one...little by little.
Like this one - https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2008-10-...
For some reason, I have never used `and` instead of `&&` in Ruby. Perhaps because I have never seen it used, but now that I have seen that I can't help but try it out next time.
I am not sure if this is even valid syntax in Ruby 2.0, but I am so glad I stumbled across this.
For those that were criticizing the purpose of this post on HN - this is exactly why it deserves a place here. Raganwald is a valued member of HN, largely because of the stuff he has published over the years (and his contributions to the community) - which are still valuable today. As a relatively young Rubyist (started learning in 2009) all of these things are like gold to me.
So thank you llambda for submitting this, thank you HN for upvoting it, and thank you raganwald for not deleting this wonderful content.
Edit: Also, I think it's cool when we get a chance to 'big up' (Jamaican speak for: "send positive/congratulatory words to") someone while they are alive and can appreciate it. Don't mean to get all morbid, but with so many 'iconic' tech luminaries dying recently (or it feels like that anyway), we always see an outpouring of love after the fact - when they can't hear it. I think it's cool that even though this isn't anything "major" (like a Nobel Prize or anything like that) it's large (and meaningful) enough, for people to take time out to 'big up' raganwald.
So....cheers raganwald.
raises imaginary wine glass
I'm thinking Sphinx/ReadTheDocs in scope, version controlled docs with pull requests, output in Jekyl to Github (or other) Pages. Etc.
I didn't realize that he lived in Toronto though. Awesome to see the streetcar on the GH blog!