[argonaut]

The tone and diction of the article really struck me as odd and unusual.

1. The heavy-handed metaphorical comparison of YC to a summer camp: "During that time, campers, or founders, have regular meetings with each of Y.C.’s counselors, or partners," "The director of this camp," " basketball-court-size dining hall,"

2. "The Y.C. term culminates with Demo Day, or D Day." N̶o̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶D̶ ̶D̶a̶y̶.̶

3. "or persist and grow 'organically' — an unsightly word in the valley of silicon." - The correct word would be "bootstrap." - and it's a totally acceptable word in the tech circles I've been in.

EDIT: Ah, I stand corrected. I worked at a YC company in the past and I had never heard anyone (the YC founders I met) call Demo Day as D-Day. The snark is really uncalled for.

[foodmonster]

The tone of this article is in fact a little different than most of what's on HN - as are most articles from the NYTimes Magazine.

The magazine enjoys a much wider audience than most of the technology articles found here. Articles from the magazine are often framed as stories, following the path of individuals to show the purpose of the article. This also helps hold the attention of the reader through the article's longer length.

The embellishments you list out here are other tools the writer and editors use to appeal to the magazine's reader base.

[tptacek]

You mean nobody calls it dday besides Paul Graham, all the time.

There's a convenient little box you can ask for confirmation of that right at the bottom of this very page.

[rdl]

I've never heard pg actually call it "dday"; I didn't even realize he'd used it in writing on demo day a lot. I honestly would have assumed a reference to WW2 or some kind of military attack if someone said "are you ready for D-Day?" even in a startup context, or maybe a reference to a specific company's launch day, not demo day (by which time most companies have launched)

[tptacek]

All I'm saying is, you see the New York Times call YC Demo Day "D. Day" and then someone says they got it wrong because "nobody" calls it "D. Day" and your first response might be to go check that fact out, since that would be an extraordinarily weird mistake for them to make.