cjc

my point exactly.

Fair enough, and I agree with that.

but look at the behavior of the community right now. The highest voted comment on this post is basically a "screw you dude" and all of my responses are downvoted without any reasons given.

Below in comments I stated what I personally would like to see change, but that too is downvoted without explanation.

These reactions are reinforcing my original point: Though many precautions were taken, Hacker News is no more immune to large group behavior than were Digg and Reddit. The community has reached a tipping point.

Can the downvoters please explain why you are voting me down?

Glad you asked:

* more news about Startups, less news about things tangentially related to startups

* less churn on the homepage

* a community made exclusively of people actually building websites

* a limit on accepting new members

* less talk about useless academic subjects

* more "review my new project" submissions

And actually, for all intents and purposes, HN is a service being provided to me, whereby I sit and expect it to present me with interesting stories.

How is it any different for you?

Please do not make this a personal attack on me, one member of the community.

I argue that submitting nothing is better than submitting garbage links. Additionally, I am not bringing the site down by voting up egregious headlines.

It's going to be really hard to say no to free beers, count me in!

Careful though - All the time spent researching / cooking / perfecting this food may eat into your ramen profitability.

I recently took up cooking and if you get serious, it gets expensive, specifically in the following ways:

1) Stocking up - Initially buying spices ($4 each), pots, pans, trays (a decent set will run you $400), a good knife($80) which you will eventually need, other staples ($a bunch)

2) Experimenting - You'll get stuff wrong a lot. You'll ruin food. You'll buy more food. Sometimes it's expensive food like steak.

3) Showing Off - When you figure out you can cook something that is noticeably better than rubber, you'll want to cook for your friends. They will like the food and thank you, but they won't always remember to leave cash behind.

4) No more junk food - Cooking the good stuff makes you appreciate good food, and by appreciate I mean spend more money on.

I find cooking to be a lot like programming. There are tons of options and methodologies and evangelists and opinions, but when it comes down it, the thrill of creating something (even something palatable only to you) is unbeatable.

Of course they should NOT remove it! Like facebook, myspace, and real life, follower counts provide a huge service.

The number of followers is a really strong objective measure of an account's (or a person's) legitimacy.

How do you know the guy that added you on facebook isn't a spam bot? If he has 600 friends (or whatever is average in your social group), then he's probably legit. If he has 0 friends, he's probably not.

How do you know if the guy that's presenting you a business proposal is trustworthy? Based on the number of references or mutual friends or the breadth of his past experience (higher = better).

How do you know that THE REAL SHAQ is actually the real Shaq? Because 650,000 people have already verified it for you.

My point is that external opinions of people (or representations of people) are really important. The easiest way to verify this is to look at sheer numbers - "Tom has 20,000 followers. Mike has 1,000 followers. Therefore, I am risking less by following Tom" is sound logic. People don't have time to research every Twitter account they want to follow. Therefore, Follower Count is a really great way to convey legitimacy quickly.

The condescending and closed-minded tone detract from the author's obvious point (startup GOOD, job bad). A more serious consideration of both sides would have proved more useful.

For example, a very serious benefit of having a lowly 'job' is to have a set schedule and be able to make it to every one of your kid's baseball games. The debate is not a clear cut good vs. evil argument so it should not be treated as such.

Can you offer a better one?

Disclaimer: I work 7 feet away from agotterer.

I convinced him to try VIM a few months ago. He tried it for a week but didn't find it productive so switched back to zend. I blame myself for not fully explaining the productivity benefits of a properly configured VIM environment, so I'll try again:

Learning VIM requires a huge time commitment (weeks, even months before it is truly second nature). However, after 'getting it', there is less of a barrier between your brain and you code. I have code completion, good syntax highlighting, syntax verification, and keyboard shortcuts to do anything and everything to my text. My IDE is pre-installed on every sever I've ever seen.

I am highly recommending using VIM as an all purpose text editor, and specifically as a PHP IDE. Knowing it is a skill that be used whether you are an author, developer, sysadmin, or any occupation that requires typing.