[adolfojp]

At the time of writing this comment, we've got:

1 person talking about how they wish react native didn't exist

1 person asking about Capacitor

1 person complaining about Expo

1 person saying that they wouldn't use react native and recommending Kotlin Multiplatform instead

1 person complaining about the quality of the discussion (Me)

0 people talking about the new architecture

I still love Hacker News but the discussions are becoming increasingly pointless.

All that's missing is:

1 person complaining about the style in which the article was written

[pavlov]

You forget:

1 person complaining about the amount of JavaScript loaded just to display this one article

[martinsnow]

Should we also complain at the amount of bootstrapping your OS had to do before your browser could show said site?

[robinsonb5]

Yes, absolutely. Just because it's been hidden behind decades of advances in CPU and storage technology doesn't mean it's not incredibly wasteful.

[martinsnow]

Explain to me why rendering html in javascript in wasteful? GNOME and Edge does the exact same thing for ther shells.

[esaym]

The site doesn't even load at all now (lol)

[supriyo-biswas]

Such comments should really be directed at dang who keeps maintaining that there’s no data point to think that the state of discussions are declining.

One way to address this might be to compute some relevance metrics using embeddings (they’re the new hotness after all) and downrank low relevance discussions. I assume it’d be especially effective for the “ads and JavaScript” discussions.

[burningChrome]

>> keeps maintaining that there’s no data point to think that the state of discussions are declining.

I would simply say a lot of contrarian viewpoints, regardless of merit, are downvoted into oblivion. Once you get hammered on something you simply had a different viewpoint on? Users tend to stop commenting for fear of reprisals. Your "karma" on here is not easy to obtain so when people downvote you simply for a differing opinion, it makes it less likely they will wade into a discussion again and find themselves on the wrong side of some Hacker News diva having a bad day.

This means you have a lot of people (like myself) simply opting out of a lot of discussions because if you're not on the right side, your comment will get downvoted immediately. There is no data point on people like myself, so there's no way to tell people that the quality on HN is declining, everything is just fine and normal when in reality, you have a lot of users who aren't engaging for fear of getting downvoted into oblivion.

[mynameisvlad]

> Your "karma" on here is not easy to obtain so when people downvote you simply for a differing opinion, it makes it less likely they will wade into a discussion again and find themselves on the wrong side of some Hacker News diva having a bad day.

Why do fake internet points matter so much? Yes, karma is difficult to attain, but it also does (almost) nothing other than indicate how active a person is here.

> This means you have a lot of people (like myself) simply opting out of a lot of discussions because if you're not on the right side, your comment will get downvoted immediately.

In short, so what? Does it really matter if one thing you said one time gets downvoted? We're all (supposed to be) adults here. All that happens is fewer people read your comment. Big whoop.

[xboxnolifes]

It's not about the points. It's about knowing that writing a comment on a topic is a pointless endeavor, so you withhold. HN, like all communities, has topics that you learn to generally avoid interacting with because the community opinion is so strongly engrained. Going against the community opinion is akin to pushing boulders by hand. Sure, you might make it move once in a while, but do you really want to put in the effort?

[stnmtn]

You can say it shouldn't matter, but it looks like on every social media platform and for most people, they do care about these things.

[moralestapia]

>but the discussions are becoming increasingly pointless

And hostile.

Point out that someone is wrong (even with hard evidence at hand) and people will still try to push their deluded conclusions nonetheless.

Same thing for expressing an opinion outside what the hivemind deems acceptable.

Btw, I think this phenomenon is a widespread cultural thing, not HN specific. Happens irl so much that it is now almost impossible to have an actual conversation with anybody.

Meanwhile, solitude and suicides are skyrocketing and people do not see the correlation ...

[adolfojp]

I've seen what you're describing and it worries me deeply.

I think it's a combination of:

1. Ragebait being so useful at generating engagement that it's become a standard form of human interaction

2. The Internet making people feel safe from physical repercussions which makes people feel comfortable with treating others badly

3. Internet communities quickly becoming echo chambers where you're forced to pick a side if you want a sense of belonging

So we've been programmed and manipulated to be angry, to be tribal, and to act without fear of retaliation, and all for what? For ads and followers.

[moralestapia]

Oh man, this is a very interesting take.

Indeed, it is definitely the case that this kind of behavior/content gets amplified. When you log in, in some sense, any reality could be crafted just for you, for good or for bad. The overwhelming majority of people are vulnerable to this. What they see == what they think it's real, me included, btw.

I once read an article about how the vast majority of dating now begins through an online interaction (say , Tinder), and how also the vast majority of these apps are controlled by 2-3 companies. Think about the massive power they have over everyone else's lives. You want to encourage interracial relationships? Suppress matches within the same race and encourage matches outside of it. (And the opposite could be done, I'm not making a political statement here). These people have the power to completely change the demographic landscape of a country in a couple decades(!). They should be heavily regulated, but far from it, no one is even aware of this.

It will only get worse with "AI", unfortunately.

[fullstackchris]

It's funny too, because what New Architecture allows (direct access to native interfaces) could solve a lot of the problems with having to fight external dependency hell - you can now write your own, so there's no excuses.

But, somehow devs _still_ expect a 100% perfect DX while maintaining the ability to publish to mind-boggling different targets such as iOS, Android, and Web

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mdgrech23]

Reddit does a lot better of job bringing good relevant comments to the top.

[poincaredisk]

I strongly disagree, Reddit brings the most engaging comment to the top, which is usually funny or ironic, but rarely informative.

Congrats on being the person comparing HN to Reddit.

[mardifoufs]

It really depends. I guess on more specific subs, sure. Like if this was posted on the react or react native sub.

If this was on programming or even web dev you'd just see "react bad" or "embedding a browser for an app is blablabla" (when react native doesn't even do that)

[martinsnow]

Reddit has a lower barrier to entry, which will invite lower quality comments. Sadly product officers are starting to flow into HN and other people with no programming experience, so the quality of comments are as such. If there was a fizzbuzz challenge to sign up, i'd bet the comments would not consist of such nonsense.

[RussianCow]

This is extremely elitist and reductionist. Plenty of the best comments/discussions on HN come from non-programmers. Personally, I like that people from various backgrounds come together like this as it tends to provoke more interesting discussion and makes HN less of an echo chamber than Reddit.

[andy_ppp]

And you are complaining about the complaining. Great work.

EDIT: I’ve added to the problem which is ironic and just missed the delete button.

[adolfojp]

That's literally point #5 of my comment. Didn't you read it?

[martinsnow]

Congrats. You added nothing to the discussion.

[adolfojp]

You're not being clever. You're just being argumentative.

[martinsnow]

I was pointing out the needlessness of your original comment. Why post it in the first place....