[pradn]

I think it's only the HN crowd that tries to look at side-projects from the monetization angle. (How else do you explain the frequent 'what's your side-business' posts? Also, this is a VC's site after all.) There are many computing cultures - people making games for gamejams, working on quines, writing code for GameBoys, contributing to Firefox, Arduino hackers. Maybe finding one of those groups will change your mindset?

[sandov]

I'm curious about the proportion of people who started visiting HN because of ycombinator vs those who came just because someone told them it had good discussions.

I'm of the latter group.

[TeMPOraL]

I came through pg's essays on Lisp (and not startups!), stayed for the discussions.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

FWIW, I make money hacking on Arduino :-)

[mrw]

What do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Same as any other type of programming: write code for people who can't.