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That said, I tried out VS Express the other night, and I forgot just how neat it is after all these years (last one I used was VB6). Certainly starting to prefer it over Xcode. And I'm loving Windows 8's UI/UX innovation over OS X's lack thereof lately. But the tides will change, and one day I'll probably be writing software using some awesome tools in an OS that hasn't been invented yet, by a future startup-turned-monopoly.

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How are comments ordered?

I thought it was the points you see, but this one has 4 points and [other] has 6 points (at time of writing), but [other] is below this one.

Is it based on absolute number of upvotes (without subtracting downvotes)?

[other]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7146156

As far as I can tell, it’s based on a combination of upvotes and time since posting. New comments start at the top of their tree and, as time passes, settle into where they would be if sorted by upvotes. So yours is above the other one because it’s more recent, but in a week, if the upvotes don’t change, the other one will be on top. It’s probably a similar algorithm to Reddit’s published “hot” algorithm (http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588).

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