> "I guess what I meant by "professional" was more people with a formal education in computer science and some years of practical experience. It is just my impression that this is not so much the case here at HN. This being said, I do not mean to be disrespectful towards someone who "only" has practical training (they may be older so that when they studied there was no formal computer-specific education)."
I have to admit this reply does leave me a little speechless. On many levels. Anyway, good luck finding what you're looking for!
My impression may very well be wrong.
Maybe the (education of the) people behind are even less relevant.
The community I am looking for should focus on professional software development. The occasional "look at this new framework" and such is ok but HN is just bloated with posts around web startups, becoming a web developer and finding out about computer science basics.
You've made a few submissions. None of them seem to be relevant to what you're asking for in this post. (Maybe the mature software one does?)
I suspect that HN would like some deeply technical post. Perhaps you could try writing one and submitting it? Or find your five favourite blog posts by other people and submitting those?
I think it boils down to this: Hacker News is a "news" site and what I am looking for is a discussion forum where people discuss software development topics.
>
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Software development topics seem to be solidly on-topic.
Try submitting a few software development articles and seeing if they get any discussion?
I have to admit this reply does leave me a little speechless. On many levels. Anyway, good luck finding what you're looking for!