[wyattk]

I want to take a moment to reflect on what a great community HN has. It never ceases to amaze me.

The link is from the CS department at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, IA. It sounds obscure, but that's my hometown. I grew up a couple blocks away from it. I sat in on classes there. I even know the author's family. That's small town Iowa, for ya.

I never thought I would see anything related to that on here. This is truly a place for all.

[ham_burgers]

I work in the fast food industry, don't code, and I'm not even particularly interested in tech, but spend hours reading the articles and comments here.

[m3kw9]

Maybe you should start coding, you may actually like it too

[arthur_pryor]

that's definitely the sort of thing i like about this place. i'd imagine programmers are very very heavily represented here, but it's nice that it's not to the exclusion of everyone else.

[netten]

I was a network engineer and would do the same, can't place the exact reason why, but today i am a python programmer doing network automation. I do think HN had a major part to play in this change

[Art9681]

Network Engineer here too. I learned to code with Python and now do full-time PowerShell automation at work. It completely changed my career. Best decision I ever made.

[lawrenceyan]

Learn to program. It will be a worthwhile investment into your personal growth and self-development.

[swyx]

serious question, if you arent interested in tech, what interests you about the articles and comments?

[a3n]

There's a lot of interesting articles here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22how%20is%20this%20hn%22&sor...

[arunix]

"I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space."

[unixhero]

Economist here

I do the same. :)

I am addicted to be very honest. I learn so much, it's worth it.

[karmelapple]

Another (former) Iowan here - fully agree how great it is that so many different places are represented here.

I ran a few meetups while in Iowa, and one of the common themes myself and the other organizers tried to help everyone feel is that these days, location really is less important than ever before.

It may help to know people face to face in the Bay Area or other major metropolitan for some opportunities, but now is the best time ever to find people with technological interests in your neighborhood, even if you’re not in a tech hub.

In fact, all the better if you’re not in a tech hub - you can become a local subject matter expert more easily in a growing community.

[weberc2]

I left Cedar Falls precisely because I became the subject matter expert within a couple years of graduating--there simply weren't many people to learn from. There were people around me who were experienced in lots of other related areas which were rapidly declining in importance and frankly didn't excite me. Besides, it was really hard to find people who were as interested in learning as I was--I was mostly viewed with suspicion because I didn't put in the bare minimum and go home, and I quickly realized that wasn't the sort of team I wanted to work on. Further, there weren't any companies in the area that were doing exciting things, probably due to a dearth of talent in the area (not to knock on rural folks; assuming the distribution of talent is the same in rural areas as urban areas, the hiring pool is much larger in an area where people are more densely populated, and this is ignoring multipliers like the draw of talent to large cities and the improved rate of learning when your talent pool has improved access to other smart people).

I guess this is to say how you view this depends on whether you interested in being a local subject matter expert or a global subject matter expert.

[Roodgorf]

Dr. Wallingford's blog is one of the few that I make sure to never miss an entry of, it's definitely cool to see him get some recognition on here.

[jjuel]

It is always cool to see UNI and Cedar Falls on HN. Also from CF and got my MIS degree at UNI.

[andythreads]

The internet startup[1] I work at is based out of Cedar Falls. Our product team is in Minneapolis (including myself), but the CEO/sales is in CF. I'm down there all the time! I've actually grown to like it quite a bit. Cool little town.

http://www.threadsculture.com/

[weberc2]

Ha! I have direct connections to half of the logos in your "case studies" page. Small world.

[weberc2]

I went to UNI for CS as well. Dr. Wallingford was dept head at the time.

[1701d]

Dr. Wallingford was my advisor at UNI. Pleasant surprise to see his blog here!