

Ask HN: How did HN start? - talhof8

Hi,
I was wondering how Hacker News really started? How did it get initial traction? Are there any early users (besides PG) that are still active to this day?
Sincerely
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pg
[http://ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html](http://ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html)

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talhof8
Thanks!

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talhof8
Also, did you code this by yourself? How much time did it take?

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pg
Originally. The first version took about a week IIRC.

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talhof8
Thanks :) Unrelated - is there any way to get some sort of indication when
someone replies to a comment of mine? Sometimes I see others' replies to one
of mine too late, and so we cannot develop the conversation any further
because they don't know I replied back.

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tptacek
I'm thankful that we don't have that feature. After a day or two, any argument
you get into on HN is likely to die because no feature of the site jams
replies to old comments in your face.

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dennisgorelik
Having discussion about the topic which I chose to participate in is clearly
good for me, otherwise I would not participate in it.

Is it good for HN in general to see such in-depth discussions? That's less
obvious, but I actually prefer to have such option myself (meaning that I'd
like to be able to see longer discussions between other HN users). Again, I
don't have to read these discussions.

What am I missing here?

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tptacek
That 'pg decided the feature you're looking for is more trouble than its
worth.

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dennisgorelik
I know that PG decided it. But it looks like you are supporting that decision
and I don't understand why.

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YuriNiyazov
The other part of his sentence is important too. "It is more trouble than it's
worth". As in, the amount of damage it will cause to the site due to ongoing
conflicts outweighs the benefit you will receive from automatically getting
notified on replies.

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peller
I don't know if this is how they got their name, but "Y Combinators" pre-date
the company by many years, and are how (some) functional languages implement
recursion/looping: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-
point_combinator#Y_combin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-
point_combinator#Y_combinator)

