This is as meta as it gets, but I learned what it sounds like when smart sounding, but closed minded people try to shut down an idea.

Looking over all the old YC projects that ended up being wildly successful, but their HN threads were full of naysayers who are better at sounding smart on the internet than providing actual feedback. Learning to differentiate between that kind of poster and people who have genuine feedback that reflects what users actually want is invaluable.

It provides me with a sense of community that I lack in my life. I am driven by technology but not a lot of other people in my life are interested in these things.

It's often providing me with "restore faith in humanity" experiences when I see exchanges in the comments where the worst impulses of humanity are expressed, and someone will respond with an eloquent and well articulated rebuttal to the insanity that society has normalized.

There are also lots of smart people saying really dumb shit on here as other comments have alluded to.

But overall, this is one place that consistently restores my hope that there are other people out there who think like I do and share even a few of my values.

You never know when knowledge on a scrap of paper floating in the wind turns out to be the key to the door of your destiny.

I've read this site for about 10 years now. The biggest thing is all the random blog posts I wouldn't ordinarily stumble upon. A lot of times, programming problems come up at work, and of course I know all the details of some arcane trivia because of 3 different articles I'd seen on it and different perspectives on it.

The biggest problem is then trying to go back and find which blog article I read. That's impossible.

There's an HN post that takes first place on my bookmarks bar, which is an Ask HN about the best paper people read in 2020 [^1]. Every once in a while I'll open it and browse through a ton of amazing papers and research and try to learn something new. Hasn't let me down yet.

[^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25346456

I learned about AirVPN from someone here. Most of the well known VPN providers are blocked in my country, but AirVPN works like a charm.

If you're always disagreeing with everyone about everything, first check (and if necessary install) the CO2 detectors in your primary living space. If symptoms persist, talk to a mental health professional -- even if you're in a locale that doesn't value such things, this tends to be surprisingly affordable. And, in the end, also surprisingly helpful.

The learning resources people share here are fantastic and leveled me up by a lot.

Whether it is SICP, Conway's Game of Life book, great MOOCs in Coursera or whatever!

My life has been changed by the gems of learning resources shared as submissions and comments.

And not only text or text-like material, the amount of good books I have found in the comments here are better than all other communities combines. I cannot put up a complete list- I found about Neal Stephenson from HN, and Cryptonomicon is in my top-5 novels. I also loved Diamond Age. I learned to meditate with Culadasa's book which I came to know about in HN comments. Not exaggerating, my life has taken a good turn because of meditation. I can spend at least the next five years reading great fiction and nonfiction recommended here.

I also come to know about many mental models, methods, etc. which have made me better.

I was born in a middle class family, and never was poor. But these were all unknown to me. HN has been an equalizer for me.

It's not one specific piece of information but how to deal with people.

In case you reply to somebody to explain why they are wrong, start a reply with a positive (nobody is 100% wrong) then tell them what you think they got wrong. It's much more effective.

Similarly, don't be snarky.

Source: observation of a zillion of threads and how they evolved in the two cases, and which ones were downvoted.

I do some programming, but I am an academic working outside academia, rather than a programmer. I love keeping up to date on the tech world here, and I have learned many important things that have helped me over the years. But what really keeps me here is something else. It doesn't always prove to be true, but the site is generally a calmer, more educated conversation than what I find on other sites. I don't have as much interaction with other educated people as I would like in my daily life, so these interactions, even if on subjects that are not my core interests, are quite valuable to me.

HN is a spark plug that caused various forward motions and explosions in my life.

I learned about open source and Linux; in time that went from a new hobby to a change of direction in my career.

I learned about startups, and figured I should try since I'm also a genius who can build a great product. It took quite a bit of money and time lost to convince me otherwise.

I found out about the online CS Masters program at Georgia Tech and did that a few years ago, this led to moving countries and getting a job doing AI.

Helped me get over the belief that people in tech must be super smart. Turns out they’re just as dumb as the rest of us.

That I could do a Ph.D. even though I am over 40. Then I went for it. No regrets.

In 2015 I stumbled upon the empathic reaction of Iranians on 9/11. From the article that had photos and cites from credible international newspapers to back it up, I browsed more on the blog and was fascinated by the photos. This was really an eye opening experience for me, understanding that we should not base our full view on news programs on TV, and I started to read more travel blogs to learn from travellers about foreign countries. The original article was this one: https://theotheriran.com/2015/09/12/irans-exceptional-reacti... I can recommend everyone to skim the photos, covering many aspect of Iranians lives that we cannot imagine.

The less-than-wildly popular posts are where the gold is. The 1000+ voted posts are usually not very interesting (but probably rage-inducing to some part of the community, for sure), but looking through a few hundred posts with a couple tens of votes each usually brings up something worth reading to the end.

The discussion has been what brings me back. I comment a lot on HN which is an exception for me online and I find the replies I get are very thoughtful, even when they disagree. Every now and then I comment on something and someone comes in with a reply that shifts my perspective. That's what excites me.

Within an hour of the Log4shell bug becoming public, I was able to inform our team and figure out how it impacted us. Yes we do have subscriptions to alerts from security services whose job it is to track this kind of thing but feeling like I can keep on top of the most critical security issues along with them feels quite valuable.

A few recommendations of truly good books about computer programming. That, or perhaps in general seeing work or prose of extremely skilled programmers, which lets one know, how much one still has to learn, avoiding ones own skill to plateau, because of thinking, that one already knows all there is to know.

I think the constant drip of interesting hardware related stuff has gotten me out of my software comfort zone.

1. Being up to date with science, news, and tech. HN never disappoint in seeing what's going on in many industries not just tech.

2. Sometimes, the comments are not actually related to the topic itself (just the title), but nevertheless, I find value reading different perspectives in the comments.

Books recommendations, without a doubt.

For me, it's a few things (some of them also identified in other comments here)

* Keeping my finger on tech and its changes

* A tech community

* Off-the-wall things to read

* Ideas for side projects - e.g. implementing lisps interpreters

All of these have got more valuable now that I'm retired and not surrounded by tech peers

HN introduced me to meteorjs, which is still the only js framework that makes it easy to bind database, app state, and UI ("3-way data binding") without a lot of mental gymnastics.

I got a new social group in Toronto and we run a weekly meetup now, so that's pretty cool. Mondays.pizza if you're in town :)