Being a hacker doesn't mean embracing unnecessary clutter. In fact, many people would argue it's the opposite.
I don't do complicated and geeky. I'm smart enough to figure it out, but I have better things to do than subscribe to an asshole designer's ego trip. I stick around on Hacker News in part because its design respects me.
I do not embrace that too. I have spent a good deal of my last 3 years out of college learning usability and can not agree more on what you said.
However, I do believe if hacker news was more obvious and followed all those principles, it would attract
- Hey, we got a job for you.
- How do you read the contents of the file in a string in Java ?
Fair enough. Though recent alternatives to Hacker News have lessened a lot of those posts, and I'm glad. Stack Overflow in particular has drawn away a lot of newbie questions (including many of my own that I'd have probably asked here). Now we just need an HN job board: Those are the posts I see increasingly more of.
I don't do complicated and geeky. I'm smart enough to figure it out, but I have better things to do than subscribe to an asshole designer's ego trip. I stick around on Hacker News in part because its design respects me.