If those stories were excluded, I'd be very uninterested in visiting here. This sort of tunnel-vision is why hackers and engineer types often seem completely out of touch with society -- and not in the good way. It's engineer-itis.
I enjoy the engineering tunnel vision that good days on HN provide me. On the bad days, HN, for me, is sort of only the culture and pieces of society that those who don't know much about either are interested in. To learn about people, places, and things I don't know anything about that aren't hacking related - I go outside.
If you don't have engineer-itis, you probably shouldn't come here. If I didn't, I wouldn't. The discussions that veer off of technical tracks (like politics, economics, social issues) are full of so much noise and emotional opinion that they make good stuff harder to find.
Count me in. Sometimes I go to dzone for my fix of programming news but they have pretty much zero discussion, which is essential in order to debunk the crappy articles.
I believe greatly that being a "hacker" is more than being a great programmer (although that is an important aspect). It means (as a job title) you can take an idea, transform it into a working business based on programming and profit both monetarily and through experience.
Many of those are "learn by others' experience." Others have great tidbits of hackerish potency that, once exposed to, may give you an "ah-ha" moment when you're trying to figure out a problem. Others, even, expose you to new technology or different technology you may be interested in learning or using in a project.
Where do you draw the line? I see the pattern for most of those (things that directly relate to code), but it seems arbitrary to include The Hairy Ball Theorem but not Use of LSD-25 for Computer Programming.
I realize the answer is probably "I know it when I see it" - but then, how do you make sure other people know, too?
Good question, I thought about those twice when compiling the list. The Hairy Ball theorem however did generate a great discussion on how it applies to game programming, so that's why I added it. As for the LSD article, while interesting, I didn't think that it was enough about code to matter. The key here isn't that we are trying to replace proggit and HN, but merely trying to organize the scope of the posts better (naturally there will be some overlap); So you should be able to still visit those sites for the lighter programming articles.
Fair enough, but how would a user decide whether a story is on topic? For Hacker News, the one-liner is anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. I guess what you have in mind is anything that will foster interesting discussion about programming?
