What we have today is drastically, unquestionably better that what Usenet offered. The very fact that we're conversing in real time in a coherent thread where everyone sees the same messages is a basic task Usenet was not fit to provide.
On the other hand, with a long-running discussion, HN, Reddit, etc. still have no way to see what messages are new since you last looked at a thread, something which Usenet clients have always done and still do now.
To be fair, that's probably because it's now a lot more centralized than it was intended to be.
I was a Usenet systems engineer (regional ISP operator, INN hacker) during the heyday of Usenet, and a dedicated user in that time as well. These rose-tinted views of how well Usenet worked don't fly for me at all. Reddit is actively, materially, multifariously better than Usenet, and Reddit is not the state of the art.