
Ask HN: How did you discovered HN? - coppolaemilio
I remember watching one of my repos (abandoned now) get a lot of stars out of nowhere and being super confused. Then one of the regular contributors told me &quot;you are on the front page of HN&quot; and I had no clue what HN was. After all that I couldn&#x27;t stop coming back to this site. If it wasn&#x27;t for that I don&#x27;t know if I would have ever discovered it.<p>So I was wondering, how did you find out about HN?
======
ksaj
I was getting fed up with how every comment section on Reddit devolves into
nonsense - either trolling, arguing, or stupid memes. Don't get me wrong.
Memes are fine in the right place - like Twitter. It has twit in the name for
a reason... The problem is, no matter what the subject is or how the
conversation is going, it eventually devolves into rubbish. Call me an old
crank, but I find it extremely tiresome. It's like being an adult, but
choosing to hang around with children with limited attention spans. If I
wanted that, I'd just take up a babysitting job and turn everything into a
Card Against Humanity game.

So one night, I just said my farewells, passed on the reins for a couple
channels I administered, deleted all my messages and logged off. I had more
than a year of Reddit Gold, but meh... it wasn't worth sticking around, even
though parts of the Lounge are alright for general chatter.

Prior to this, I had seen a few mentions to articles here, and I checked it
out. I actually read more of the comment sections than the articles - exactly
what I was looking for. People actually discussing stuff.

HN's subjects are on par with what I look for, and people actually being able
to converse civilly without turning everything into a meme or a flame fest is
a huge bonus.

So, here I am. Feel free to send me HN Gold if it gets invented.

~~~
muzani
Yeah, this is one of the reasons I like HN. Memes are fun, but sometimes I
just want to discuss stuff seriously. I'll still upvote a clever pun or subtle
meme reference on HN, but no reason it should be at the top.

~~~
ksaj
I love puns, but if a comment is _only_ made for the sake of making the pun,
it probably isn't adding anything to the discussion. A pun or meme-ish comment
with additional _actual_ content however, is much more conducive to
conversation, and doesn't risk derailing or dead-ending an otherwise perfectly
good thread.

------
kirubakaran
I recently came across my (admittedly cringey) blog post from 2005 (that's 15
years ago!): [https://kirubakaran.com/archive/2005-12-thoughts-of-paul-
gra...](https://kirubakaran.com/archive/2005-12-thoughts-of-paul-graham/)

So turns out I discovered Paul Graham in 2005 via his "Great Hackers" talk,
started following his essays, then discovered Reddit from that, and then
Hacker News from that.

My HN profile says I created the account in Aug 10, 2007. But I remember
lurking for a while, so I must have started using it a few months prior to
that.

Seems like a lifetime ago.

------
mattmanser
I was reading coding horror back in the 2000s when it was mentioned on that
(Jeff Atwood's blog of Stack Overflow and Discourse fame, though he originally
was known for his blog).

I think that triggered a large influx of new users right then so the community
response was to post a ton of erlang articles to try and discourage new
members and stave off an eternal september.

Seems like dang even got involved in that!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537347)

------
trumbitta2
IIRC, I discovered about YC back in 2011 from the book
[https://www.amazon.com/Startups-Open-Sourced-Jared-Tame-
eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/Startups-Open-Sourced-Jared-Tame-
ebook/dp/B004ZULMR6)

Came to take a look, found HN.

------
brudgers
Shopping oriented research for a new workstation class computer rekindled my
interest in _current_ tech after about a decade. Eventually, I wound up
regularly looking at Techmeme. One day, there was a link to an HN discussion
thread. In a few months, HN pretty much replaced Techmeme's river.

------
muzani
I applied to YC, saw that they asked for HN handle and look positively on
people who have said smart things on HN. So I suppose I should cut down on the
trolling, lol.

------
giantg2
I've been reading it for a long time. I only recently opened an account to
comment/post. I think I heard about it from someone in one of my college
classes.

------
cpach
I probably found it via Paul Graham’s web site. I don’t remember exactly how I
found his website, probably via his Lisp essays or “A Plan for Spam”.

------
lukaszkups
I've learned about HN at my first job/apprenticeship from older coders 10
years ago. Same for twitter, basically :)

------
sushshshsh
I've been here so long on so many banned accounts that I can't even remember
how or why I got here

------
saluki
I heard Mike or Rob mention it on the Startups For The Rest Of Us Podcast back
in 2011.

------
codegeek
I think I found Paul Graham's articles when googling for startup ideas and
found HN as well.

------
oxygenz
I've been interested in Ycombinator for a long time... saw a reference to
hackernews

