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by fnayr 3037 days ago
For me the coolest thing about HN is the breadth of experts here for any (even niche) tech field. This allows for in depth understanding of new products (when someone who actually worked on the team making it is here) or calling out conspiracy theories about why some company shut down some product (because they have inside knowledge and can actually explain the reasoning).

I can't count how many times I've read 'I work on the team that built that' with some new insights or opinions just sitting nested in a comment chain 4 levels deep.
2 comments
trishume 3037 days ago
A few of my favourites:

Low level optimization - nkurz BeeOnRope dragontamer

Programming Languages - pcwalton jordwalke chrisseaton

Other people who work on well-known things that comment frequently:

jblow (The Witness, Braid) phire (The Dolphin Emulator) pizlonator (Webkit/JSC)

I made a web app just so I could subscribe and read all their comments via RSS: http://hnblogs.thume.ca/

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opportune 3037 days ago
I would add Radim (Gensim, Data Science)

I was pretty excited when he responded to my comment one time

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disgruntledphd2 3036 days ago
Hadley Wickham (R & beautiful API's for data stuff) once replied to my comment about buying a dead tree copy of his book and recommended the HTML version.
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fnayr 3037 days ago
Interesting you have jblow on there, as I just was watching his programming stream on twitch yesterday and he said he doesn't really come to HN much anymore. His reasoning was basically that he wanted a place where programmers were working on harder things (basically CRUD web devs).

I think he is missing a lot of content on here if that's his true opinion. I think you can find all sorts of varying levels of depths on a vast amount of technical issues.

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wasx 3037 days ago
Agreed. The wide spread of experts who come out and give first hand accounts of the event/product being discussed adds a tremendous amount of value to the discussion on the site.

Discussion on this site is by no means perfect but it is miles ahead of the alternatives out there.

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icc97 3037 days ago
Coupled with the occasional burn of people who don't realise they're talking with the actual developer/person behind the product
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