
The front page of HN almost exactly 5 years ago - buckwild
http://web.archive.org/web/20071110100803/http://news.ycombinator.com/
======
mintplant
A few notes as I read through this:

\- Passwords are _still_ just as broken now as they were then.

\- Functional programming is still widely discussed, though the focus is more
on Lisp than Clojure/Haskell/etc.

\- Fourth post is the usual, somewhat sensationalist, _this commonly-accepted
thing is bad!_ sort of headline that makes the rounds here every so often.

\- This post on syntax highlighting [1] reminds me of another recent one [2].

\- 37signals is there with another sage-like statement on the business.

\- Article on women in tech in slot #13.

\- Woah, is that Clo _j_ ure there in #14? And on SourceForge, even. It's come
a long way since then.

\- Fears about government invasion of privacy abound.

\- Hey, MySpace! That spam "epidemic" never quite subsided, it seems.

\- Interesting mathematical discussion in slot #24. When reading the headline,
I almost expected to read "stackoverflow.com" in the domain slot. Goes to show
how popular that sort of post is here nowadays.

As someone who wasn't around back then, it's interesting to look back on this
now and see what the site I love now was like five years ago.

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20071110115358/http://drinkbroken...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071110115358/http://drinkbroken.typepad.com/drink_broken/2007/11/syntax-
highligh.html)

[2] <http://www.kyleisom.net/blog/2012/10/17/syntax-off/>

~~~
tikhonj
Discussions on functional programming--particularly Lisp and Erlang--seem much
_more_ prevalent then than now. Which is really too bad: functional
programming seems to have gotten significantly more awesome in the recent
past.

As a simple indicator, there are only two articles about functional
programming on the front page, and they're both fairly shallow, general and
not current. They're also related: same author and similar subjects.

I'm sure it's just a function (heh) of HN's growing userbase and more diverse
audience. Still, I really would like more functional programming stuff. I even
vote on interesting FP articles on new, but it often isn't enough, especially
because the new page moves fairly quickly and I don't go there _that_ often.

But yeah, ignoring the relative proportions of subjects, the front page
actually seems fairly similar to the current one.

~~~
jrajav
If you want to follow a particular topic in the "new" articles, you could try
doing what I do - I follow the RSS feed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss>
using Google Reader, and since the search in Google Reader results in the feed
and query going in the URL, you can bookmark that search. For instance, you
could bookmark
[http://www.google.com/reader/view/#search/functional//feed%2...](http://www.google.com/reader/view/#search/functional//feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Frss)

By the way, Reader has many of the same awesome keyboard shortcuts as Gmail -
you can use j and k to go up and down in the list, 1/2/3 to switch views, v to
open the link, etc. (Try hitting ?)

------
Xcelerate
Interesting how the articles on the HN homepage are almost timeless. Many of
those articles I find just as interesting as the one's posted on today's
homepage (perhaps more interesting since there's more programming and less
consumer tech news).

~~~
aviv
A lot of good content is buried in archives of good blogs/news sites, and
popular aggregators such as Flipboard completely ignore anything but the
freshest materials. I worked on FavoritePosts.com a while back, it basically
helps you discover older content that's otherwise invisible due to our
existing content consumption habits. Maybe I should launch what I have so
far.. It's like Prismatic for older stuff.

~~~
someperson
Yeah do it!

I've been thinking about how those who up-vote stories on HN very carefully
have an enormous wealth of interesting content in the "saved stories" section
their profiles. It's such a shame that this is value is locked away: Somebody
could generate pages and pages of amazingly interesting content based on other
people who upvote similar to themselves.

~~~
aviv
One way I used to "detect" good content was by keeping track of the amount of
discussion content items generated (ie. blog comments, Reddit/HN submissions
and discussion activity). There are other mechanisms including the social
elements similar to how Prismatic works.

I'm currently working on a related startup that we actually applied to YC W13
with, so we'll see what happens next. The current version of FavoritePosts
will require a couple of weeks before I can launch it as an MVP.

But thanks guys for the encouragement! I'll start dusting off the codebase to
see exactly where I'm at.

------
ChuckMcM
Resolution of the MIT lawsuit: <http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N14/statasuit.html>

------
mikeroher
"Innovative New Rails Host: Online IDE, Web Console, Instantly Live"

It's been five years since the launch of Heroku?

~~~
dkulchenko
June 2007: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroku>

~~~
mintplant
_> Heroku is owned by Salesforce.com._

Well, you learn something new every day.

~~~
thinkbohemian
I work at Heroku and sometimes forget sometimes. They're very supportive and
very hands-off.

------
dolphenstein
6th item on the list --> "8 points by hhm 9 hours ago"

Wow, talk about points inflation!

~~~
loboman
Interesting that you mention that.

hhm was my previous username, but I lost its password now. Probably after
switching accounts some years ago, after becoming a little paranoid about
internet identity (I even sent a mail asking pg to remove that account... he
was smarter than me and said he wouldn't do that; thanks pg). I now realize I
shouldn't care so much about that really.

By that time, I realized that it might be easy to get into the leaderboard
just by posting quality links of stuff I was interested into. I put some
effort into that by some time and I reached (I think) the 10th place. I stored
a screenshot about that, named something like "and-what-was-that-for.jpg" that
I can't find right now. But I remember noticing a couple things about that
experience:

\- how empty it was after I achieved that random objective... it was just some
score, and it didn't serve any useful purpose, so once I achieved it I
couldn't feel too happy about it

and the most interesting bit:

\- it was very easy to get into, say, the 20th or 15th spot. But then raising
into the 10th spot was much harder. I understood that people between 15 - 200
weren't trying to reach that kind of score, or they weren't trying too hard.
People don't compete too much. Then when approximating the 10th spot, I found
that it was getting increasingly harder. I'm sure somebody trying to get into
the 1st or 2nd spot would have to spend an amazing amount of work into that.

It was just a game I played for some short span of time, then I quit. Now I
miss that account a little bit :)

~~~
reitzensteinm
I know that feeling all too well.

A few months ago I decided to focus on high quality comments after feeling
like I was contributing to the HN noise a bit too much.

As a proxy for that, I tracked my average comment score, trying to get it
above 10.

Today it's 14.93, which is quite high - only 4 of the top 100 are higher.

I think my comment quality has risen substantially, but I also subconsciously
started making decisions based on score - not posting on topics that were
sliding down the front page, or where there were already hundreds of comments
but I did have something to say.

In short, the gamification overtook the original goal, and the tail was
wagging the dog.

I've now started using a much simpler method - taking a deep breath before
hitting reply, and trashing the comment if I don't think I'm adding anything
to the conversation. I like this way more.

~~~
venus
This is (I think) my fifth account here - the rest have all been hellbanned,
sometimes because I deserved it, sometimes not.

The first couple of times I was banned it hurt me maybe more than one would
expect. I took it personally, I thought about it deeply, I really took it as a
wake-up call. I thought long and hard about what was wrong with my personality
that the (IMO) best community on the web would actively act to expel me.

One of my later accounts, I acted like you're describing. I tried hard to stay
"on message" and to write the kind of things I theorised HN would want to
hear.

I think I snapped at one point and yelled at someone. That account is, of
course, now hellbanned along with all the rest. I don't even remember the
username. By the way, my first account here was either on the leaderboard or
maybe a few points off. It was a long time ago.

These days I am more zen-like about the whole thing. I mostly write what I
want. I do try not to be abusive - my character is flawed enough that
sometimes that's what comes naturally. If I get banned, well, that's life. But
I do what you say, taking a second to think about whether my comment adds
something - if it doesn't, I just delete it and move on. I think that's
perhaps a sign of maturity, when you're willing to throw away your own words
(that you might have spent half an hour perfecting) because you recognise
they're probably more destructive than constructive to the community you
respect.

------
prostoalex
And that $28 mln pmarca donated to Stanford Hospital materialized in Marc and
Laura Andreessen Emergency Department
[http://stanfordhospital.org/clinicsmedServices/medicalServic...](http://stanfordhospital.org/clinicsmedServices/medicalServices/emergencyroom/)

Next to Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, an impressive testimony of how
technology affects the lives of people in Bay Area beyond technology per se.

------
yan
Ahh a post by nickb. I remember making a thread a few years ago asking about
what happened to him.

------
dennisgorelik
All comments had points back then:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20071110123222/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071110123222/http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77246)

So much better than no comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77246>

------
nsxwolf
I wonder if that person chose the baby or the startup.

~~~
dennisgorelik
I don't know about the baby, but he definitely quit his startup.

2007:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20071012022938/http://www.shelfma...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071012022938/http://www.shelfmade.net/)

Now: <http://www.shelfmade.net/>

~~~
JeremyMorgan
Either that or he learned Japanese

------
duck
If you like this you'll enjoy my HN Wayback newsletter:
<http://waybackletter.com>

------
cpeterso
Any predictions for front page headlines of Hacker News 2017? I'm going to
guess we'll see stories about Lisp, women in tech, and patents. I'm going to
assume those are three _separate_ articles. :)

~~~
Hermitian
Digression: A woman in tech successfully patented Lisp. Given the
deteriorating state of patent law, I wouldn't be surprised if it is in the
same article.

2017\. I would hope it will be some discussion of quantum computers. It's a
topic that never ceases to amaze me.

------
brianobush
Good things don't change. I guess the bugs haven't changed either, e.g. the
"More" link at the bottom is still broken wrt expired link if you let HN sit
for any length of time.

~~~
pg
That did change, though; since then I've made the More link static for users
who aren't logged in, which is what the Wayback Machine is showing us.

------
tucson
For anyone interested, a link to easily browse the best posts since 5 years:
[http://www.hneasy.com/index.php?type=posts&hours=70000](http://www.hneasy.com/index.php?type=posts&hours=70000)

~~~
damusnet
The "next 20 posts" link goes to localhost...

~~~
tucson
Thank you. It's fixed. Left and right arrow should hopefully work to browse.

------
brennenHN
If that was the front page today, I would not have thought anything was amiss.

------
rahul_rstudio
What I like about HN is the simplicity and quality of content it has offered
since so many years. I heard about HN only about a year ago and have been
regularly reading it. The insights and inspiration it offers to newcomers is
simply awesome.

The homepage looks just as it looked 5 years ago. That is something worth
applauding. It just proves quality and simplicity always win in the longterm.

------
richardlblair
So basically nothing has changed?

And here I was operating under the illusion that we were innovating...

Oh well, time to go and make a new photo uploading site.

------
s_henry_paulson
I was hoping to see at least one person showing off their HN re-design. ;)

------
lifeisstillgood
My interest is piqued by at least two articles about avoiding a co founder,
and one with the sort of research behind it that would be a blog post now

------
mvkel
If anything, this shows that HN hasn't strayed very far from where it was,
despite complaints to the contrary.

------
biot
There aren't enough political, human interest, and torrent-related stories.
Must be a fake.

------
replayzero
When it was live then you only needed like 10+ upvotes to get on the front
page

------
RyanMcGreal
Funny to see so many front page articles with no comments.

~~~
recoiledsnake
I remember reading Reddit before it even had support for comments!

E.g. <http://web.archive.org/web/20050809014858/http://reddit.com/>

------
jamgraham
congrats heroku on 5 years. you make my life easier.

------
jamesbritt
Wow. Looks very much like the front page today!

:)

You posted the wrong link.

------
cgcardona
Wow it still looks so similar.

