I don't remember exactly when I got hooked on HN—probably around mid-2009 or 2010. For the past 14 years, it's been the only serious social media I use and love.
HN has changed my perspective on engineering and the world, my life metrics, and ultimately given me wisdom. Anonymous arguments flourish beautifully here. No one cares who you are—only your argument matters.
It's helped me a lot with running my consulting business. I don’t have to repeat other people's mistakes or, even better, I can just copy proven systems and best practices. I've learned so many lessons and found incredibly useful links here.
The text-based format with upvotes and downvotes works beautifully. No fancy web frameworks—just pure HTML and CSS for my browser.
HN is the only tab in my Chrome that uses the least RAM but provides the most benefit to my daily info intake. Text mode keeps me focus to read & write content. No emojis, no stickers, no visual distraction !
I hope HN stays like this forever.