Yes, but you need to consider your audience when posting links to this site. For example, if I posted to HN a link to a really good cookie recipe, it wouldn't be a good fit for this site. The author did nothing wrong, but that doesn't make it a good submission to HN.
This article is a bit more of a grey area. It is on a subject that is deeply relevant to this site and I'm sure some HN readers will get value from it. My point is that an even better submission to HN would have been an article on the same topic but written for programmers rather than mathematicians.
I'm surprised to this take, because I feel like I see math stuff posted here fairly often, and often with a large number of people commenting on it in substantive ways. Often times the math savvy crowd will even help explain stuff to people like me who are not particularly fluent in advanced math.
> Often times the math savvy crowd will even help explain stuff to people
Perhaps, but HN apparently is pretty hostile to people explaining why something is not clear and how it could be more clear based on all the downvotes. I'll keep that in mind: "If you don't understand something, shut up!"
Not understanding something isn’t the issue.
Also not an issue: the quality of the article.
Expect to be challenged by content here. Everybody is from time to time. Asking for a mathy analysis to drop the math, fundamentally misunderstands the value of the math.
I'm not suggesting they drop any math. I'm suggesting they drop the math notation. As programmers, we spend 8+ hours per day reading code. Expressing the same math but in the syntax of code would make it accessible to more people on this site. It's like speaking in someone's native tongue instead of their 2nd language. I can read and mostly understand a news article written in French but it is going to take a lot of time and effort. If a news article is written in English I could read it quickly and easily. Both languages are presenting the same information, it is just a matter of how it is presented.
HN is a site for programmers (or specifically "hackers"). Posting an article to a site for programmers in math notation is like posting a French article to an English message board. Some people will be able to read it with varying levels of difficulty, but wouldn't it be better to post an English version of the same information so everyone can read it easily?
The article was elevated as relevant by HN readers, not forced on them.
As an isolated wish, your ideas might be reasonable.
But framing them as necessary HN values, as a critique, as ideas others should conform to, you are not being sensible or reasonable.
the poster and the writer are different entities... only the writer influences the poster, not the other way around...now the poster saw value for HN readers and thats why it ended here.. with this logic your position doesn't make sense
"hackers" = "resourceful".
> If you don't understand something
Ask, but if you advance weak ideas be prepared to be hit - and be glad about it, you are advised to revise the weak ideas.
I think people likely hit an early "break" and "goto xkcd 386" when they saw "this is a software development site" in your comment, without reading the rest of your comment.
Clear explanations are a good thing, but different explanations help people in different ways. Your explanation seems helpful to me, and reminds me of Ben Affleck's explanation in the GQ interview. But Ben Affleck connected it directly to arrays of RGB pixel data, which clicks more with me personally, but probably wouldn't with everyone. It certainly didn't make things any clearer to the interviewer.
There's a certain irony in praising clear explanations as a defense of an explanation that needlessly veered into value judgment
Well, sure... but it seemed to me that they didn't realize they're posting on Startup News, a news site for founders of startups:
https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
"... the thing that makes hackers such good startup founders is that they care about more than business. They have intellectual curiosity driving them as well as the desire to make money. So the way to make a news site for startup founders is to make it be about more than just startups. ... If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
My thought was to show some grace, considering that not everyone's been around here for 20 years or knows that "hacker" doesn't apply only to computer programmers. That was my thinking anyway.
I had no idea it used to be called Startup News! When I joined in 2012 this site was "essentially /r/programming but for more serious programmers and without jokes"
I didn't downvote, and I don't think there's a problem with explaining why something isn't clear. There's a difference between expressing criticism and saying that something doesn't belong here, and which I'd argue is evidenced from the fact that the reaction to my comment critiquing yours doesn't seem to have ruffled many feathers (at least not yet!)
Not sure I'm understanding you correctly, but it sounds like you're saying that I said that this post doesn't belong here? I said no such thing. I said this article is "unhelpful for *me*" but "deeply relevant to this site" and "some HN readers will get value from it".
Imagine a nursing home that serves steak every day. One resident says "this food isn't helpful to me because I no longer have teeth to chew it. Wouldn't this be better for everyone if we had soup?". They're not suggesting outlawing steak, after all some people will get value from it. They suggesting a way to better serve the entire population of the nursing home.
> software development site ... you need to consider your audience when posting links to this site ... a link to a really good cookie recipe ... for programmers
That is really your interpretation only - and it directly clashes with the explicitly intended: "intellectually curious" (which will be, if not polymaths, at least open).
Of course an intellectual curiosity space hosted around the world of startup enterprises will attract membership of people with experience in engineering.
If you check the submissions, it should be immediately evident that there is no closure.
I see plenty of things shared here that don’t fit your preconception of what is a fit for a site you don’t operate.
> For example, if I posted to HN a link to a really good cookie recipe, it wouldn't be a good fit for this site.
Going to have to disagree with you here. That would very much depend on the particulars of and circumstances surrounding the recipe. This is a site for anything that would interest the typical hacker (whatever that actually is) after all.
I'm frustrated I can't downvote you more than once. You are the example of anti-intellectualism that is allowing the world being controlled by dumbed down mass media.
If I consider the hacker news audience as "smart people" and/or "people with curiosity about science and technology", a couple of equations are exactly what should appear in every single post.
Have you considered that you are simply not the audience that Alex or speckx had in mind? It would be healthy to recognize this simple fact and move on while letting the intended audience (Hi! Longtime HN member for over a decade!) enjoy it.
"If you don't understand something, shut up!"
Got it. Stay classy HN.
Please do not put words in my mouth. Did I say to shut up? I said to move on, since this is clearly stressing you out, and additionally because you are ostracizing other members of the community who are just fine with this content. This isn't Harrison Bergeron, the community as a whole does not have to cater to your own intellectual shortcomings. There is no need for sarcasm or snark.
> I said to move on
They're the same thing on an internet forum. There is no space to move through, so while in the physical world "move on" is different from "shut up", on an online forum they both mean exactly the same thing: "don't say anything".
And yes, this is stressing me out. I took the time and effort to think about and explain how this post could reach a wider audience on hackernews, citing an example from my own learning experience, and nearly everyone has attacked me for it. The original article was clearly meant to explain/educate. You'd think "here's how you can do that for more people" would be useful feedback.
You are welcome to shout at the clouds all day. I'm not asking you to shut up, I'm telling you I think it's worth moving on, internally. I'm trying to explain why you would be better served by accepting that you're not the only member of the community. It's easy to forget that other people don't think the same way you do; Bram Moolenaar himself chastised me over this once and I took it to heart.
The thing is, there are fundamental issues with your post. You said, "if I posted to HN a link to a really good cookie recipe, it wouldn't be a good fit for this site", which is wrong; Hackers might be interested in cookies. The site guidelines state,
If that cookie recipe is really good, I'm curious! Cooking is something many hackers love to do.You also criticized the article for... using math notation... and wrongly assumed that other engineers on this site who also are interested in mathematics, like Alex Wang, would rather dispense with the compact notation and instead deliver pseudocode. This is entirely the author's prerogative, just as it's your prerogative to skip it and move on, or even criticize it. But you cannot get upset when your criticism is then itself critically evaluated, or claim others are being hostile for examining the content of your comment just as you did the content of the article. I know you weren't being hostile in your criticism, and I'm not aiming to be hostile in mine.
> You'd think "here's how you can do that for more people" would be useful feedback.
Sure! What this mostly comes down to is your misunderstanding of the breadth of our community, and the site guidelines. You truly did mean well, and I also mean well here, even if I am being blunt. The rest of your comment was fine and I don't take issue with the general sentiment.
> You also criticized the article for.
> What this mostly comes down to is your misunderstanding of the breadth of our community
Actually I think it's the people responding to him that aren't being sufficiently careful to read what he actually wrote and to understand the message he was attempting to convey. Granted he could have done a better job communicating (case in point, this very conversation) but that's often going to be the case.
It seems like people are interpreting it in a hostile manner when from my perspective the core of it is both actionable and reasonable feedback for anyone attempting to explain a technical topic. Both of the original points (using mathematical notation and failing to step through concrete examples) are each things that will alienate a decent chunk of any potential audience. In fact the former is one of my primary complaints about wikipedia articles on math adjacent topics.