Comment by dang
5 years ago
Even with all of that, it's not a great example of what pg used to call a middlebrow dismissal, especially when there are so many millions of worse examples. "Quite trivially" sounds terrible out of context, but (a) he scoped it to Linux users, (b) it's clear from the downstream reply that he was speaking from experience, and (c) he immediately agreed with Drew that even that solution had drawbacks and thanked him for the technical correction. That's the behavior of someone making good conversation, not someone being haughty. A haughty dismisser would have seized the opportunity to up the snark.
> it was overlooking the idea that the YC app(lication)s are not intended to create products for Linux power users
I don't think that's an accurate reading. His Linux point was only one of three, and the other two were about the mass market. Given that he had implemented the Linux solution himself, I think the fact that he led with that point was probably more out of geeky exuberance than overlooking non-technical users.
It seems to me that in the context of 2007 all three of those points could easily have popped up in Dropbox's YC interview. Don't forget that back then, YC would sometimes fund a startup even though they didn't much believe in the idea (Airbnb famously so), because of the personal impression made by the founders. That's still the case today, and it was the case back then as well :)
> That's the behavior of _someone_ making good conversation, not someone being haughty.
I meant to focus on the text's tone sounding haughty rather than accuse the person being haughty.
Let me try to explain another way to emphasize the text aspect: that particular sentence in isolation is what is quoted on the internet outside of HN:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22you+can+already+build+suc...
https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22you+can+already+build+such+...
The "quite trivially" may only be scoped to one bullet point and may be unfairly weighted when looking at his followup thoughtful conversation -- but it also elevated it legendary HN lore.
Ok, but if you read the text as a whole, it's not true that it's haughty. That it sounds haughty when quoted selectively is the internet's fault, not the commenter's. At most he can be accused of (a) not pre-emptively bulletproofing his text against selective quotation, and (b) not knowing the future. And (a) reduces to (b).
I take your point about lore, and on that level it's just good fun.
p.s. Also, nice use of the word 'haughty'. We need those good English words.
Hello. I’m honestly loving this conversation. Thanks for engaging seriously about it. It also means a lot, dang, that you took the time to both understand my points and also to counter the narrative, all these years after I commented.
As much as I appreciate your thoughtfulness, I really don’t mind the commentary. I’m long past being frustrated about being misinterpreted, and I learned a lot from it, anyway.
As I’ve stated since[1], I was an undergrad when I made those comments. I know how much I’ve grown since then. It feels like someone else said them, and everyone is talking about “not me” when they remark about it today.
I definitely appreciate the love, though. Thanks!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661824
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