[ok_dad]

Look the popup is bad, but consider he probably usually gets way less visitors, so in testing it’s probably not that bad for him. Maybe a few per article usually, but with hacker news it blows up.

Let’s not roast the guy too much, we’re all human and like cool stuff. This would be cool with a little more work, I think.

Also, the article is great. It puts together a definition for the theory of what software is in a succinct way. Software is code, but any specific software is an artifact of the theories in the developers brains. Makes a lot of sense to me.

[josephg]

Disagree. Writing a blog post is like getting on stage. You need to come on stage with a dream that you’re going to dazzle the audience with your show. Your blog is so interesting that it’s worth the time to read it!

If you doubt yourself so much that you think some gimmicky notifications are more interesting than the article, you’ve lost me as an audience. Why even have the content if you believe someone from Texas being on the page too is more interesting than what you wrote? If you think that, just make that. Don’t invite me to a show then halfway through interrupt your own show with something else. The idea alone gives me adhd. Stop it.

[redhale]

> You need to come on stage with a dream that you’re going to dazzle the audience with your show. ... If you doubt yourself so much that you think some gimmicky notifications are more interesting than the article, you’ve lost me as an audience.

I'm sorry, I just have to laugh at the self-seriousness of this and the other negative takes in this thread.

It's a quirky little "fun" feature that shows the location of other people viewing the site, implemented on a personal blog. If you have a blog that gets a few dozen views a day, it could be neat. If you get the HN hug of death, it's extremely annoying.

The author made a mistake, but it's a minor one, and I think it hardly betrays the self doubt you seem to be reading into it. It's not like it's an auto-playing video ad.

It's a good article. I suggest powering through to use the reading mode of your browser.