HN Explorer

Anyone else lurk and feel like they understand nothing?

87 points by to-too-two ↗ HN
I’m a hobbyist game developer and I’ve been on here for years. The content seems fascinating but honestly I understand almost nothing that’s being said here even though I’ve programmed on and off for years.

Anyone else? Makes ya feel like a dumb-dumb.

72 comments

[ 40.7 ms ] story [ 2493 ms ] thread
meiraleal
When I arrived here yes. Now I understand most things, join conversations and even get upvoted sometimes.

It'll happen to you too if you stay around and continue engaging in discussions. Don't be shy.

genman
What specifically? Topics here are very diverse.
stoolpigeon
I wouldn't say almost nothing. But the more domain specific things get the less I can track.

My big takeaway has been when that happens, I remind myself I'm not fit to judge if a comment is good/right or not. I try to get a feel for the context of conversations and just kind of mentally file it away.

I've learned a lot here over the years and the discussions sometimes remind of the good old days on slashdot.

dewey
I feel like HN is one of the places where everyone can contribute, the topics are very diverse and sometimes random links that have nothing to do with technology are posted and have long discussions attached to them.

Sometimes topics you will be very familiar will be posted and you’ll notice that just because people comment doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about.

jasoneckert
I would look at it this way: If you "did" understand everything that was posted on this site, you're visiting the wrong place for learning and growth.
MrVandemar
"Programming on and off" sounds like you haven't approached the field in a structured way. You can learn and accomplish a great deal that way, but it also means you have some gaps. Ever implemented a linked list? Compared sorting algorithm efficiency? Doing a course in computer science will probably give you a better grounding.

Also, people have niches. I'm guessing you're knowledgeable in your particular niche, and so is everyone else in theirs. HN is a broad church and you can find biologists and people who write optimising compilers, and either are going to look at the other's field with some bafflement.

Also, remember how it goes with learning things:

* Beginner: I have so much to learn ...

* Intermediate: I know everything!

* Expert: I have so much to learn ...

You might know more than you think you know.

TillE
I have no idea if this applies to the OP, but I see a ton of people in game development communities who just jump in with minimal programming experience and try to muddle their way through by watching tutorial videos and stuff. It's particularly terrifying when they're trying to use C++ that way.

If you want to take this stuff seriously, absolutely study computer science, and a little computer engineering as well. When you really understand the fundamentals, you can pick up the rest.

card_zero
I question why "terrifying" applies given that they're writing games.
MiguelX413
Because of the memory unsafety of languages such as C++.
card_zero
"Here's an obscure indie game, let's create a save file that exploits a buffer overflow and socially engineer people into opening it," just barely conceivably.
UtopiaPunk
Game development is a lot more than programming. If someone is just making projects on their own, it really doesn't matter much if the code is "good" or not. You just gotta have a game that works.

If you want to get hired as programmer in AAA game development, then your job role starts to become more specialized as you move up, but that's true in a lot of environments. And jobs for AAA game development are admittedly competitive, so the more value your bring, the more likely you are to be hired. Sometimes that means being an uber elite coding ninja, but it also might mean that you are able to wear a lot of different hats, including skills that aren't programming.

Anyway, I just want to say that jumping "in with minimal programming experience and try to muddle their way through by watching tutorial videos and stuff" is awesome, actually, especially if your end goal is making games itself. Just do it!

embeng4096
> Game development is a lot more than programming. If someone is just making projects on their own, it really doesn't matter much if the code is "good" or not. You just gotta have a game that works.

Balatro, a recently-released solo-dev indie game, is a great example of this. I saw two tweets the other day that, together, support your point: "Balatro has a 5000 line if-else chain"[0] and "in the 3 months since Balatro has launched, it has been collectively played for a total of 6200 years"[1].

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1cbcmr0/how_is_it_... (couldn't find the twitter link directly but summarized it from this reddit post)

[1]: https://x.com/LocalThunk/status/1794876280997036443

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admissionsguy
> Intermediate: I know everything

I was in this phase about a decade ago, which was just a few years into my professional life. I knew nothing back then and I know very little now.

0xDEAFBEAD
Most internet users read without commenting. Many HN posts relate to some fairly narrow technical area. The rare users who comment on any particular post will generally be the users who have some familiarity with that area.
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goles
Had multiple submissions get exactly zero interest I was certain would be bangers.

Had posts I submitted as a second, even third or fourth thought, from reading the night before that interested me, and was sure no one would care about get picked up to be on the front page.

Don't overthink it. If you have something interesting to show or say then go for it as long as it's within the guidelines. Otherwise if it doesn't attract attention maybe it wasn't that interesting after all, or it was good but not great. There are only 30 spots on the front page and maybe your submission was 31/30 material at the end of the day. Best to not worry or fret about it, if you think it's interesting, try submitting it!

Have some faith in the editorial staff and HN as an institution that has endured for over a decade maintaining interesting content and discussion. If it's truly good it will get selected for pool/invited or bubble up in the comments.

Best of luck on your games and be kind!

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

sva_
> Had multiple submissions get exactly zero interest I was certain would be bangers.

A lot of stuff simply gets lost on 'new'. I mean how many people even go there? I rarely do so myself. The cases in which I upvote a submission with very few points are usually when I want to submit something I found elsewhere and enter the link in the search before posting.

throwaway211
You be you. Haters gonna hate. Problem's inside them.
snapdaddy
As others have commented, most people have specialised knowledge. For example, I've been programming professionally for about 30 years; let me share my knowledge of game programming:

Most people use Unity these days. I'm pretty sure it's in C#, and there was something about the licence recently that they probably backed down from. You can still write in c with OpenGL, but you will probably have to create your own game engine(?). You will need a game loop where you track the milliseconds elapsed each frame. Try not to stutter in your game loop. 16 ms. Oh, and double-buffering the output is probably a good idea.

See? Don't sound so smart now, do I?

card_zero
Nice guide, pretty comprehensive. I think it's Godot or something else these days. You don't have to care about milliseconds if you write a turn-based game, and anyway movie frames last for 42 milliseconds so I think going faster than that is overhyped. Sound is awkward to do because of communication between threads or something, don't know, will investigate one day.
TillE
I haven't done web development since the late 90s, so quite a lot of what people talk about (from frontend frameworks to Kubernetes) is total gibberish to me. That's fine, it's not something I'm interested in even as a hobby.
wackget
I have done web development since the 90s and I can tell you authoritatively that most of what people talk about, like those frontend frameworks, are gibberish.

Or at least, they're not worth the hype they're given. The wheel is constantly turning, and the hot new framework of today is just a re-hash of something already done years ago with a pretty facade.

You probably learned the actual fundamentals of the web, which is exactly what a good developer should do. Nowadays "frontend devs" don't know how to make the most basic functionality without React, Bootstrap, and 99 other pieces of bloat.

Frankly the stuff I look at just disgusts me on a fundamental level. Like as soon as you decide to use React, you've just mandated up to several megabytes of JavaScript simply to render your HTML. That's abhorrent.

Animats
Yes, web development has become extremely complicated and has constant churn. This despite the fact that most of it isn't doing all that much. It's embarrassing.
anakaine
I last successfully did front end dev in the late 90s ans veryearly 00s. I'm very back end these days. Front end work feels incredibly frustrating, between things like UI/UX design, responsive layouts, async, handling data into whatever thing it is you're trying to populate, etc. The whole lot is a massive nightmare to even try getting back in to. It's frustrating to the point t where I look at back and end know that I can handle with authority some pretty fun and fascinating use cases that require deep expertise across many fields - and make it performant + cost efficient et , but I can barely get a front end together and even then it looks and works like crap.
wackget
Honestly it's only frustrating if you approach it with an "all or nothing" mindset. Your site doesn't have to be all-singing, all-dancing. In fact it's probably better off being simple. To wit, you don't need async/AJAX stuff (unless you're making a chat app or something).

You definitely don't need a framework and you might actually be able to avoid using JavaScript altogether. I use jQuery only because I like the elegant/terse syntax and I struggle to think of any type of "ordinary" website where you'd need anything else.

If you approach frontend like "I need to use React/Angular" then yeah, you're gonna bash your head against a wall, because it's an entire new ecosystem and paradigm to learn.

anakaine
I would like to have something that looks nice and modern, has a good user experience, and is responsive. Those three requirements take me pretty close to the "too ahrd" rabbit hole most of the time. Not always, just often enough.
jpc0
Apart from one or two things that are currently not implemented well by the browsers, your requirements can be met without a single line of JS or even a server at that. And you may very well not run into those one or two things.
anakaine
Could I ask you to elaborate futher?

I dont see how a single line of js can remove the need for front end design, complexities of scaling, theme choices, and user friendly design patterns with interactivity.

meiraleal
Running LLMs in the browser and creating AI-enhanced experiences is where is the innovation in the frontend lies now. UI frameworks is a matter of taste, there is simple, complex and bloated/corporate alternatives.
ggm
There is absolutely nothing wrong with lurking. Consider theatre: do they need an audience to act, or even react?

I admire people who unlike myself are sufficiently self contained not to need to post.

AbstractH24
> There is absolutely nothing wrong with lurking. Consider theatre: do they need an audience to act, or even react?

I lurk both in this world and in the world of Broadway.

One of the biggest shockers I had (many years ago already) was how little anyone involved in making theater cares about the audience.

skywhopper
Only at most 10% of the content on here is for any particular audience. And about half of that the audience doesn’t understand but thinks they do.
Cheyana
I just enjoy the submissions and the commentary of people that are way more knowledgeable than I’ll ever be. I’m not a professional anything but I’ve worked around professionals all my working life and I enjoy their company, and have no pretensions about my own intellectual ability.

So just relax.

DougHolland
Sure, I'm in much the same boat. I did my last programming in COBOL in the 1980s, and it wasn't even the main part of my job. I've made no effort to keep my knowledge current. I'm simply not a techie, if ever I was.

But reading Hacker News is always interesting, so here I am.

sva_
People on here can often get super-niche about a topic where there might only be a rather limited number of people on the whole planet who are in the clear on it, and I think that might be a big part of why you feel that way. It is also the reason why this place is pretty unique and (given some interests) amazing.
whatsakandr
I do C++ and graphics programming. I know nothing about web dev, so whenever I see stuff about databases and REST APIs, I'm clueless.

The key is to be growimg what you know in your area.

YZF
If something feels like it's interesting then go explore it in more detail. Read a book, find some relevant YouTube videos, take a Coursera course, read more in Wikipedia. Access to knowledge on the Internet today is amazing.

I have studied Math/Comp.Sci. I've been writing software professionally for a long time. There are specialized topics I'm not an expert in that might go over my head, if I'm interested enough I'll spend time and dig deeper.

My theory is that you want to have a big picture and be able to go into details when/where you need to.

gjs4786
Fundamentally, that's why you love HN. It's why I do, and anyone else does too. Even if you don't understand something, you are drawn to try, and that itself is a hallmark of intelligence. We come here repeatedly because it stays interesting, because it is always something new.
m463
I think sometimes just observing/listening will let you see patterns. And a lot of life is just matching the patterns and comparing/applying it to your experiences.
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lanthade
Reminds me of my first time reading the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook when I was just getting into the live sound field. Read it again a year later after a lot of time in the trenches and the things that were gibberish at first now made complete sense.

To the OP, if you find something interesting but it's above your head dig in and you'll learn. Otherwise just smile and nod. I'm by no means a software engineer though I can (and do) write code to get various jobs done. Lots of stuff here is interesting to me but lots also is of no interest and/or way above my pay grade. I'm happy to be surrounded by stuff that has the potential to challenge me to grow.

AbstractH24
I also did the same thing 25+ years ago with computer magazines. And similarly, I built up a little programing business.

There, it felt like I learned a lot by experimenting hands-on. That's probably what I need to do more in this situation too. In a structured fashion.

The line between being a "generalist" and "knowing a little about a lot, but not enough about anything to do anything" is fine.

Havoc
It’s hit and miss. Links to academic papers I usually don’t even try to read.

For borderline stuff reading the comments often helps highlight the significance

anakaine
I often pick up the academic papers that are relevant to me here. To each their own!