I really wonder what he would say today. In a way, being devoured by LLMs achieved SO’s ultimate goal of helping people solve programming problems quickly, but at the cost of SO.
SO was already well DeadOverflow way before LLMs were a thing. For reasons people explained when SO came out: just as FaceBook was bound to be filled with accounts of dead persons (earning it the name "DeadBook"), SO was bound to be filled with outdated answers. That the people asking the question could pick what was, according to him, the proper answer was a huge mistake and it's been immediately pointed out as stupid and they didn't fix it: not only wrong answers were picked, but also answers bound to be soon outdated were picked as "correct" too.
Don't get me wrong: I used SO a lot in the beginning, but the problems --that many foresaw-- quickly became obvious.
And I'm not saying not allowing to pick one correct answer would have saved SO: but its downfall probably wouldn't have been so abrupt.
Not all is rosy with LLMs but at least we don't have to suffer SO answers and SO comments anymore.
It's interesting how much the good parts have to do with not worrying about how much money your making or the job you have and instead focuses on technical topics. People are not happy Dan, and we can't bring it back to 2014 when a select few got to get massages before they pushed their commit for the day. If you want to be part of an interesting technical discussion you have to acknowledge where the people with knowledge are.
> I compiled a very abbreviated list of comments I like because comments seem to get lost.
Note that you can track comments you like by clicking its timestamp and then clicking "favorite". Then they're available at e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=sillysaurusx&comme...
Related. Others?
HN: The Good Parts (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33364865 - Oct 2022 (48 comments)
HN: The Good Parts (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27049601 - May 2021 (82 comments)
HN: The Good Parts (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20092118 - June 2019 (35 comments)
HN comments are underrated - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12772925 - Oct 2016 (359 comments)
(I can't remember why that last, i.e. the first, title was so different.)
Hey Dang when can we start (secretly) following our favourite users on HN
There is https://hnrss.github.io/ if you don’t mind a 3rd party service.
Hey thanks.
A few minutes later: this looks fantastic. Thank you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3656581
I really wonder what he would say today. In a way, being devoured by LLMs achieved SO’s ultimate goal of helping people solve programming problems quickly, but at the cost of SO.
SO was already well DeadOverflow way before LLMs were a thing. For reasons people explained when SO came out: just as FaceBook was bound to be filled with accounts of dead persons (earning it the name "DeadBook"), SO was bound to be filled with outdated answers. That the people asking the question could pick what was, according to him, the proper answer was a huge mistake and it's been immediately pointed out as stupid and they didn't fix it: not only wrong answers were picked, but also answers bound to be soon outdated were picked as "correct" too.
Don't get me wrong: I used SO a lot in the beginning, but the problems --that many foresaw-- quickly became obvious.
And I'm not saying not allowing to pick one correct answer would have saved SO: but its downfall probably wouldn't have been so abrupt.
Not all is rosy with LLMs but at least we don't have to suffer SO answers and SO comments anymore.
It's interesting how much the good parts have to do with not worrying about how much money your making or the job you have and instead focuses on technical topics. People are not happy Dan, and we can't bring it back to 2014 when a select few got to get massages before they pushed their commit for the day. If you want to be part of an interesting technical discussion you have to acknowledge where the people with knowledge are.
Well said.
(2016)
Added. Thanks!