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Comment by ytilibitapmoc | Hacker News Reader

I agree that HN has jumped the shark. As an example case, I dare you to try to express an opinion on HN which does not toe the party line.

And for those of you about to down-vote this comment: where are the articles pointing out the problems with HN, where are the articles showing the flaws in Lisp, where are the articles which denounce venture-capital-funded startups as the snake-oil of the modern age?

"But those positions are wrong!", the puppeteers cry. Really? Last time I checked, questioning conventional wisdom is what made the modern western world possible.

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...where are the articles showing the flaws in Lisp...

I've been reading about Lisp since I first learned of its existence in the early 90s. In all that time I can't think of a really good critical article that I've read about Lisp (there is some decent stuff about the various drawbacks of Common Lisp, or Scheme, or Lisp-1 vs Lisp-2, etc. And then there's some really bad stuff that's just old recycled FUD), but nothing good that really attacks Lisp as a whole critically.

I bet if such an article was written, it would actually get very far on Hacker News indeed. I'd certainly be interested to read it!

"where are the articles pointing out the problems with HN"

This one's on the front page.

"where are the articles which denounce venture-capital-funded startups as the snake-oil of the modern age"

Anything and everything from 37signals usually hits the front page.

>Where are the articles showing the flaws in lisp?

Easy. Worse is better:

http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

The source:

http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html

I was at the OOPSLA (+- a few years of 2002) where Gabriel denounced being a programmer and claimed to be a "code poet"... Looking at dreamsongs it looks like he's mostly followed through on that statement.

I get upmodded when I criticize Lisp or useless startups. I think people are generally receptive to things that are contrary to the party line. Most of my Apple-hate comments don't even get downmodded anymore.

I don't think HN has jumped any sharks in this respect. But we do get a lot more "popular" articles now, and these lead to a lot of controversial-but-substanceless comments, which are annoying. (And I'm not saying I'm not guilty of writing comments like that, BTW.)

where are the articles pointing out the problems with HN

like this one?

> where are the articles pointing out the problems with HN

There's guidelines telling you what to do with this feedback. Better to contact them directly with feedback than post an article.

> where are the articles showing the flaws in Lisp

Heresy. Lisp has no flaws. But I'd read a well written article on the subject.

> where are the articles which denounce venture-capital-funded startups as the snake-oil of the modern age

I remember reading plenty of those. There is a lot of information/articles around about bootstrapping and running without VC funding. It does help to browse around rather than just reading the homepage. Some good articles unfortunately don't get the upvotes they deserve. C'est la vie.

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