When your site grows large and you move it to an hosted service, or wants to point it to an Web Application Firewall or a DDoS mitigator, you might want to use a CNAME type record, to point the hostname to another flexible hostname that the vendor manages depending on your traffic and needs.
Now, if your website is hosted at the origin (“example.com”), you can’t do that. But there is no issue with the “www” hostname being a CNAME record. So if you want any scaling flexibility, now or in the future, you should go with the www hostname from the beginning.
Granted, his blog was knocked offline by HN. But would a CNAME have saved their Wordpress site?
Now, if your website is hosted at the origin (“example.com”), you can’t do that. But there is no issue with the “www” hostname being a CNAME record. So if you want any scaling flexibility, now or in the future, you should go with the www hostname from the beginning.
Granted, his blog was knocked offline by HN. But would a CNAME have saved their Wordpress site?
FWIW, https://ycombinator.com/ redirects to https://www.ycommbiator.com, as does Reddit.