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Comment by Invictus0 | Hacker News Reader

I've been reading HN pretty religiously for years and I've only saved one or two comments. Hell, I've only even saved a few dozen links. How many people here find the comments valuable enough to save and meticulously categorize them?

Also, "knowledge assimilation stack"? Surely there is a less pretentious name for this.

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If there is anybody on HN who lacks pretense it's Abishek, you can take it to the bank that he thought about the name before affixing it and that it most certainly wasn't picked to impress but for practical reasons.

I would add, surely there is a more pretentious name that could have been selected alternatively.

I don't mind how anyone choose to use HN, I detailed how I do it.

> Also, "knowledge assimilation stack"? Surely there is a less pretentious name for this.

These are my reasoning behind the title, If you have better suggestions let me know.

Knowledge: Since there is difference between comments which have information vs comments which have knowledge from experience. Since I wish to save and recall the latter it's knowledge.

Assimilation: an act, process, or instance of assimilating, Assimilate: to learn (something) so that it is fully understood and can be used[1].

Stack: A common term (loosely based on data structures) used to define combination of software technologies used in an architecture to solve a problem.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assimilate#h1

I, for one, find it inspiring that Abishek_Muthian takes this seriously enough to think hard about the name, rather than going with something bland. Just the length conveys the depth of his though, and now we get to know exactly what he meant by it as well.

Linking to the dictionary definitions of each constituent word is somehow even more pretentious than the original title!

We just call this “note taking” in college

> We just call this “note taking” in college

Note-taking is just one aspect of the entire process, I even have a sub-heading for that. Calling the entire process just that doesn't do justice to it.

It basically does do it justice. It's not _just_ note taking (there's a bookmarking equivalent in there too), but it's basically just that.

As for the title of the post... As Kevin Malone famously put it, "Me think, why waste time say lot word, when few word do trick".

You may be confusing note-taking with rewriting notes as part of study. Most wouldn't use note-taking for both of those activities, whether in or out of college, and what the article author is doing is more like note rewriting, except he's using a system of tags and links to do a sort of emergent restatement of ideas.

The scene from The Office was ironic. ;)

He only linked to one. It's also not obvious what words may come off as pretentious for someone less experienced with English (I don't know OP or his background, but personally certainly didn't share your visceral negative reaction to the article title).

I've certainly seen a lot of yc links to older comments in newer comment threads, so certainly a lot of people are saving comments in a way where they can retrieve them relatively painlessly.

I use a google docs to note stuff I spend time with (started with lectures, TED talks, long reads, HN threads). I usually add my extremely raw naive snarky reactions/impressions...

Just from the top of my mind, aviation related comments have been useful. One of the recent flexport threads had a comment that linked to a YT video about the flexport guy (CEO).

These comments about MRI are basically invaluable:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29064223

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29064222

The recent Zillow fuckup thread had a few quant traders comment that I found interesting.

This comment about Oracle DB: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941

This comment about Newcomb's paradox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28589691

I don’t meticulously categorize but I probably save 1-2 useful links or comments a week.

I run a small agency so it’s usually around estimating/planning, why people don’t like their job, libraries to improve dev workflow, product dev, etc.

I’m working on an open source static site thing that might be interesting to you. Would be delighted if you contacted me through my profile.

I think the name is tongue-in-cheek like the devices of Aperture Science.

"More pretentious name for X" is 90% of bay area startups.

Pretentiousness seems, at worst, annoying. At best, I'm thrilled that there are people who 'overthink' things. Every technology that I use is the result of someone who took something 'too seriously', especially the open source ones.

For a concrete example, how pretentious was Wes Mckinney to build Pandas?

Podcast story: https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/data-science-tool-bu...

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