
“12 years ago today, I finished writing Hacker News” - theCricketer
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1049723540902215681?s=21
======
pavlov
"Finished" is the right word. Apart from small UI tweaks it's still the same
site as in 2007...

And that's part of what makes HN great! I can't help but think that a team of
Very Serious Expensive UX Professionals would have made a mess of HN thrice
over by this time. (Can't you just imagine the 2010 rewrite in Java and GWT,
and the 2014 redesign as an Angular SPA with sophisticated giant web fonts all
over the place?)

~~~
asaph
I for one would like to see some improvements. Here is my wishlist:

1\. Markdown support

2\. More profile capabilities. e.g. avatars, vanity URLs, link to your GitHub,
Twitter, Stack Overflow, blog, etc.

3\. Automatically create cache link for articles in case their hosts go down
after being linked from HN.

4\. Revision history for comments.

~~~
sbinthree
I would dislike all of this except markdown support.

~~~
Insanity
cache links sounds like an okay idea.

OTOH, the avatars sounds like a horrible idea to me.

I'm neutral on the markdown one, it wouldn't be too bad but it might end up
making comments look like mini-articles rather than just comments.

~~~
Bartweiss
I'm opposed to markdown for that reason. It's a bit of a shame that the
existing formatting isn't aligned to markdown syntax, and I think lots of
people don't know the

    
    
      code trick.
    

But otherwise, I'm grateful to not have posts using headers, multipart essays
with horizontal rules, or that "every word a hyperlink" style that people use
when they want to intensify a statement by implying it's densely sourced or
describing a common issue. The informal standards HN has worked out seem
sufficient for the conversations I value most here:

\- this is sufficient for bullets

\- since people don't bullet whole paragraphs

1\. this works for numbers

2\. for the same reason

> _And this is just fine for pseudo-blockquotes, which can be much longer._

And the lack of embedded links encourages human-readable URLs that are either
sources[1], or inline links to a page people might want to visit after reading
the comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown)

It's a bit arbitrary what's supported, but HN has always felt to me like a
display of how working within constraints can improve quality.

~~~
lilactown
I think that just having a proper code block, that worked on mobile, would
help a lot.

~~~
Bartweiss
Bringing over the markup for monospacing would actually be really nice, yeah.
It is irritating that code can't be inlined and requires an unusual input like
leading spaces to mark out.

------
jermaink
HN is a perfect example of an classic, evergreen product. Or call it a
crocodile product, as crocodiles are somewhat location-loyal.

Are there more examples of products that did (on purpose) not change
significantly?

If you consider the sentiment on the recent GMail redesign, Facebook, .. it
often appears that product managers are the only ones that want to change the
product and its appeal. I think Reddit also had the crocodile concept for long
time. Google‘s main search page changed minor since the past 10 years. I guess
there are more examples (Quora, Craigslist, Wikipedia..?)

@pavlov your examples capture the could-be quite well.

~~~
japhyr
> Are there more examples of products that did (on purpose) not change
> significantly?

I think Craigslist would be the classic example of a simple design that hasn't
changed significantly over its lifetime.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Amazon and ebay are good examples of sites that have made very slow,
incremental changes over the years.

~~~
bhandziuk
I don't know, Amazon seems pretty bloated at times. The page may look similar
to old Amazon pages but there is just so much happening I'm overwhelmed.
"Related Items" " People who bought this also looked at", multiple sections of
"Sponsored Items", "Customers Also Bought", "Frequently Bought together".
Sigh. Just show me this product and the information about it (specs, reviews,
questions [and don't show me any questions which were just answered with "I
don't know"])

~~~
chasedehan
The overwhelming is especially prevalent on AWS - I get super confused every
time I do work there. So many buttons, services, etc. It's for that reason
primarily that I prefer using GCP as it is kept a bit more similar.

------
furicane
As someone who started using internet in 1997. (I still consider myself green)
- this is a perfect website.

Could it use improvement? Yes. Does it need it? No.

Simple, fast, does one thing and does it great, has no featuritis and
overblown annoying "UX" that current web suffers from.

~~~
Loughla
God, exactly. I don't come to news aggregators to see user profiles. I don't
come for chat. I don't come for suggested articles. I don't come for any of
the 'new' features people seem to want to cram into every god damned thing
(Reddit, I'm looking at you).

I come because there will be insight into articles/stories that I won't get
from any other site. And all you need for that is a simple threaded
discussion.

------
kaizendad
I love how HN is actually _done_. How often does one give oneself permission
to call anything but the smallest project _done_? I know I rarely do. It seems
very healthy, for both the community and for Paul Graham individually, that
something like HN can be _done_.

------
quxbar
Anyone else using [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) ?

~~~
joaomacp
That is the main way I interact with hackernews.

Before using it, I was checking the website more frequently, fearing I might
lose some popular post. Much like other social apps make you do - facebook,
twitter, reddit...

But with the 'top 20' and 'top 10', I know I can be 2 days without checking
it, and I will still see the most popular posts.

I don't like when apps incentivize/reward time on the app. It's the same
reason why I've never played MMOs.

------
john37386
Really nice place here. I read it daily and constantly learn new technos and
trends. Thanks Paul

------
rhacker
I test my internet connection with HN. It is more reliable than Google these
days.

~~~
romwell
It's gotten to the point where "news.yc" is the thing I type into an address
field on a reflex.

------
peregrine
And he made his last comment 3 years ago.

~~~
supahfly_remix
Do you think he might post under another account?

~~~
jonny_eh
I doubt it, since he's still active on Twitter.

------
jnordwick
1- Better comment markup support 2- More comments per page 3- Start page auto
collapsed so only to level shows 4- verbatim sucks especially on mobile and
too difficult to actual use for code 5- This was a list with numbers and is
now trashed 6- make hiding work across devices

------
fha
Wow, I wish I found HN when it launched. I can't begin to describe how much it
has shaped my life, my outlook and my career in the few years I've been
(mostly) lurking here.

Thank you Paul and everyone else involved.

Thank you fellow HNers <3

------
sbr464
One bug, which I think can be fixed in css, is losing scroll position on
device rotation (iPhone). I think iOS should fix it for sites, but until then.

One feature that would be nice is seeing new comments in popular posts without
having to look for them. (Not threads, just unrelated new ones)

------
jeremy7600
And I'm still the only one in the last two jobs I've had that even knew of
this sites existence, which he aptly points out in his tweet about the value
of Reddit vs "Startup News".

------
nathell
Previous submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178889)

------
bluedino
>> (I delayed launching it till Feb 07, IIRC because the Reddits worried it
would mess up their acquisition by Conde Nast.)

Did they think it was a competitor or something?

------
barryp
I wish the login page, which contains two <form> tags, didn't have identical
fieldnames in the two forms, "acct" and "pw" \- it confuses 1Password, which
always wants to fill in and submit the "Create Account" form when I'm trying
go log in, which naturally then gives me an error "That username is taken.
Please choose another."

------
DoreenMichele
This actually seems to be a duplicate, though it got a lot more traction than
the previous post I know of:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178889)

~~~
chmaynard
Hacker News can achieve perfection only after they figure out how to automate
the merger of duplicate posts and their comments. This might be a problem for
machine learning.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I happen to like its messy imperfection. Wo unto us should they ever achieve
perfection and stop having tolerance for imperfect people and their endless
typos, auto-corrupt BS, misreadings of what the other commenter meant and
myriad other human shortcomings.

------
adioe3_14
Aside undeadly.org the only other website on the internet in 2018 that doesn't
leave any cookies in my browser. I am still amazed by that fact and applaud
it.

~~~
growtofill
I see five in mine.

------
DanielBMarkham
And six months after it was released I joined, coming in from a google search
"startup advice", I think.

Twelve years. Wow.

Dang some of these other guys are old.

------
andromaton
Translation: I'm proud of what i created. It's holding up well.

~~~
romwell
Potato, potato.

------
gomox
Can we please have blockquote syntax now?

------
tomerbd
and it's a beauty! no more features needed! not even markdown! it's finished!

------
mywittyname
Does HN make money?

~~~
hiccuphippo
Can I turn around this question and ask how much does it cost to run HN?

~~~
bluedino
One server, probably < $100/month

~~~
yitchelle
Are they any full time admins/mods of HN? Probably wrong, I get the feeling
those who moderates are doing it during their idle time while working at YC?

~~~
justplay
dang works for full-time to moderate HN as per
[https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-
hac...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news/)

------
extremum134
Anyway, it feels somewhat more scholarly than reddit.

