Here are some things I like which some may not: I really like the "general geek interest" articles that usually make their way to the front page on weekends. I like political threads (that mostly concern directly or indirectly big government vs. free market). I like those threads not because they're constructive in any way, but because they provide an insight into the psyche of Silicon Valley. As an amateur historian I think some of those articles and discussions are bona fide historical texts (like that video from Startup School of the guy who suggested Silicon Valley should secede from the US). I also post on these threads occasionally – not because I think I might convince anyone, but because I think many of the readers here are very young, or unfamiliar with non-American culture, and it would do them good to hear other opinions. I also like heated arguments over programming languages. I know they inevitably turn religious, but I don't mind; they're fun if you're in the right mood, and I figure that anyone not in the mood for religious language wars won't read the thread anyway.
This is something I don't like, which some probably do: I wish HN were less biased towards web technologies and tools that are mostly applicable to fast-moving startups. Of course, this is the nature of the community and is to be expected. But I do wish there was more on embedded, enterprise, real time and game development. The problem with this bias is that I am sometimes swayed and mistakingly think that HN represents the "software development community", which, of course, it doesn't in the least. I need to remind myself that web companies are a small minority of software developers, and that IBM, Oracle and SAP employ more people than Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Netflix combined, ten times over. And that's not even counting large organization IT departments and defense. So whenever I get a sense of "so that's what's everyone is doing" on HN, I need to remind myself that the community is far from representative (although it does tend to be composed of early adopters).
"I wish HN were less biased towards ... fast-moving startups ... I do wish there was more on embedded, enterprise, real time and game development."
I agree with you in general but specifically its not an either or relationship. I wish there were more coverage of fast moving start-uppy entrepreneur topics in the embedded and game fields.
So there's a small company called micro-nova in Detroit (Detroit?) that ships a nifty little xylinx dev board in a DIP-40 form factor and I love the idea. I have no connection with these guys personal or economic just bringing up as an example of fast moving entrepreneur small business startup-py type embedded story not covered on HN.
Pretty much everything adafruit, evil mad scientist, and dangerous prototypes does should get a story on HN by the above criteria.
Spiderweb software recently (like last week) released their most recent game Avadon 2 an awesome deep little RPG. Admittedly it is not a "new tech" story because their focus is on story and gameplay, which is excellent. As far as entrepreneurship goes, spiderweb is basically one dude. Again no personal or economic connection to me, just an example of something that should be on HN but isn't.
X-Plane, another one man entrepreneur did get some minimal coverage on HN when he got sued by some patent trolls for basically porting his simulator to Android. So HN is not entirely devoid of all entrepreneurial gaming news, just mostly.
Maybe the TLDR of both our posts is we should be submitting more of what we see? Would anyone else upvote an interesting hardware startup / entrepreneur type story as opposed to the prevailing common software ones?
> Maybe the TLDR of both our posts is we should be submitting more of what we see? Would anyone else upvote an interesting hardware startup / entrepreneur type story as opposed to the prevailing common software ones?
I don't know if this is an actionable problem, as it depends on the interests of the community, which are, in turn, governed by who they are and what they do. If other types of developers join HN in large numbers, the situation might change, and it will benefit even web-based SV startups, too.
But there's another problem. A few years ago I was working for the defense industry, and hadn't even heard of HN. We were doing distributed, fault tolerant systems with graceful degradation – things that have since become very interesting for "web" (in the wide sense) developers. Obviously, much of the work done there is classified, but even the parts that aren't don't get discussed much because that community hardly blogs at all.
So it's not just a function of what gets submitted or upvoted, but of what "content" (how I loathe that word) is out there, and developers in other industries just don't write of their experience as much (which is a shame because we could all benefit from that). Once in a while we're very lucky to have some technology leak from the often maligned (here on HN) "enterprise". Look how much we've learned from Erlang, that for years was the sole ___domain of telecom. Or Clojure, which is a result of Rich Hickey's experience in projects that are very far removed from web startups.
Click "new" on the orange menu bar across the top and scroll down looking for what I recently posted. You are right, some of these FPGA technologies should get more coverage because a lot of hackers could build cool startups around hardware as well as software. But don't complain about it. Find articles on cool stuff and submit them. Many will be ignored but eventually people will catch on that there is something worthwhile in hardware hacking. Just keep plugging away at it.
> But I do wish there was more on embedded, enterprise, real time and game development.
I guess that is everyone's bias towards the home turf. I wish there would be more biotechnology, chemical technology, etc.
But I must admit that I am greatly surprised how many of those folks can be found here. The diversity, culture and competence of the HN community is really something.
Here are some things I like which some may not: I really like the "general geek interest" articles that usually make their way to the front page on weekends. I like political threads (that mostly concern directly or indirectly big government vs. free market). I like those threads not because they're constructive in any way, but because they provide an insight into the psyche of Silicon Valley. As an amateur historian I think some of those articles and discussions are bona fide historical texts (like that video from Startup School of the guy who suggested Silicon Valley should secede from the US). I also post on these threads occasionally – not because I think I might convince anyone, but because I think many of the readers here are very young, or unfamiliar with non-American culture, and it would do them good to hear other opinions. I also like heated arguments over programming languages. I know they inevitably turn religious, but I don't mind; they're fun if you're in the right mood, and I figure that anyone not in the mood for religious language wars won't read the thread anyway.
This is something I don't like, which some probably do: I wish HN were less biased towards web technologies and tools that are mostly applicable to fast-moving startups. Of course, this is the nature of the community and is to be expected. But I do wish there was more on embedded, enterprise, real time and game development. The problem with this bias is that I am sometimes swayed and mistakingly think that HN represents the "software development community", which, of course, it doesn't in the least. I need to remind myself that web companies are a small minority of software developers, and that IBM, Oracle and SAP employ more people than Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Netflix combined, ten times over. And that's not even counting large organization IT departments and defense. So whenever I get a sense of "so that's what's everyone is doing" on HN, I need to remind myself that the community is far from representative (although it does tend to be composed of early adopters).