Hacker News changes more often than people think, just not the layout because people here are weirdly fetishistic about it.
Since I've been here they've added vouching for banned users (and actually warning people beforehand) thread folding, Show HN, making the second chance pool public, thread hiding, the past page, various navigation links and the API. They've also been trying to get a mobile stylesheet to work. They've also mentioned making various changes for spam detection and performance. And the url now automatically loads a canonical version if it finds one, and the title is now automatically edited for brevity. And I've probably missed a few things.
And HN isn't a simple application by any means. Go look at the Arc Forum code - it isn't optimized for readability, or scalability or reliability, but joy - for the vibe of experimental academic hacking on a Lisp. It's made of brain farts. Hacker News is probably significantly more complex than that for being attached to a SV startup company and running 'business code' and whatnot.
I mean, that’s not really that much is it. And that’s the point, HN really doesn’t change much. Whereas Reddit, for better or for worse, has a much higher output of new user facing features.
Since I've been here they've added vouching for banned users (and actually warning people beforehand) thread folding, Show HN, making the second chance pool public, thread hiding, the past page, various navigation links and the API. They've also been trying to get a mobile stylesheet to work. They've also mentioned making various changes for spam detection and performance. And the url now automatically loads a canonical version if it finds one, and the title is now automatically edited for brevity. And I've probably missed a few things.
And HN isn't a simple application by any means. Go look at the Arc Forum code - it isn't optimized for readability, or scalability or reliability, but joy - for the vibe of experimental academic hacking on a Lisp. It's made of brain farts. Hacker News is probably significantly more complex than that for being attached to a SV startup company and running 'business code' and whatnot.