HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is HN an echo chamber?

16 points by sysk ↗ HN
From my observation, the software community seems to be largely segmented into two main subcultures or school of thoughts (while there are many other shades in between or at their intersection): the hacker one and the non hacker one (I will use "enterprise" for lack of a better word).

The hacker subculture has a more craftsmanship oriented approach to software development while the enterprise subculture has a more engineering oriented approach.

Some technologies that tend to be more commonly associated with the hacker subculture would be Linux, Python/Ruby/Go, REST, etc. And with the enterprise: Java/C#, Windows, Oracle, SOAP, UML, etc. (I might be a bit off here)

Obviously, Hacker News is largely dominated by the hacker subculture and since it is my primary source of information, I am sometimes wondering if I am missing out on some valuable knowledge from the other side of the industry (e.g. I stumbled upon infoq.com recently and realised I didn't understand half of the jargon - IT governance, AOP, DDD, APM, etc.).

Do you think my assessment is somewhat accurate? If so, any actionable advice on how to get more exposure to the non-hacker side of the industry?

10 comments

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minimaxir
Hacker News is far, far less of an echo chamber than Reddit or Product Hunt.
sysk
I agree and didn't mean this as a criticism of HN (there is indeed a lot of variety here compared to other online communities). My question was more along the lines of: "Is there anything of value to be learned from the enterprise software world?"
mindcrime
My question was more along the lines of: "Is there anything of value to be learned from the enterprise software world?"

It kinda depends on what your interests are, and where exactly you draw certain lines, but I'd give that a qualified "yes". Actually, to me, I consider enterprise development to be far more interesting that, say, working on consumer facing webapps or something. And I am biased, as my own startup is a vendor of "enterprise" software.

But, yeah, the enterprise world has some really big, hard and fun challenges to deal with... and I guess I take a somewhat expansive, "big-tent" view of what falls into the enterprise space. From where I'm sitting, using Hadoop, Kafka, Spark, Storm, Giraph, Hama, etc. for complicated backend analytics and real-time business intelligence is amazingly interesting stuff. And distributed systems of all kinds fall into what I'd consider enterprise. The recent talk about a "data center operating system"? That showed up here at HN, but I still consider it an enterprise topic (but not necessarily exclusively so).

Anyway, things like MDM (Master Data Management), BPM (Business Process Management), BRMS (Business Rule Management Systems), Decision Support Systems, BI, Predictive Analytics, Real-time Marketing, SOA, etc., have lots of fun and interesting aspects.

FWIW, another good site for keeping up on the enterprise side of things is:

http://www.theserverside.com

sysk
Thanks! Any other resources you can recommend? I'd be especially interested in related books/online courses if you know any.
doctorshady
Definitely, there's a lot of balanced debates that go on here. Though topics related to the health of the tech industry in general - such as a tech bubble or the net neutrality controversy seem to be shrugged off more then every so often.
sehr
Seeing the cynicism here on HN is almost refreshing after browsing PH
greenyoda
I work on enterprise software, and I can tell you that Linux is very big in the enterprise space - it's not just a hacker thing. For example, IBM makes it available on all their server platforms, even their largest mainframes.

And from reading the comments on HN for a few years, I know that there are others here who work on enterprise software.

"I stumbled upon infoq.com recently and realised I didn't understand half of the jargon..."

The jargon is an ever-changing spew of new names created by marketing people for the same old shit. I've worked in enterprise for my whole career and I don't even understand most of the jargon on my employer's web site.

phantom_oracle
"The jargon is an ever-changing spew of new names created by marketing people for the same old shit."

The same could be said for the hacker side of things where people re-invent the same things and give it new names.

There's also a lot of hacker jargon like: Kanban, Agile, Lean, Functional Programming, Iterate, Ideate, Hack (which means basically everything within the context it is said), etc.

wallflower
Other than working at an enterprise-type company, getting exposure through watching videos might help. And remember - the best definition of enterprise software that I've ever heard is: enterprise software is when the person buying the software almost is never the one who uses it.

https://www.oracle.com/javaone/sessions/index.html

Based on your brief posting, you might be interested in more CIO-style matters.

http://www.cioinsight.com/ciovideos/

Really, I personally believe the more exposure you have to fields outside of your profession (at least the one you are in for now), the better mental model of the world you want to be part of you produce.

I used to work in enterprise software so I can say for sure that it its own unique bubble, just like startups.

In fact, read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...

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