36-45 is just as big as the 26-35 group, I must say I'm surpised!
I'm close to 42 and I've been here for 15 years now (as a reader more than as a contributor); when I joined I certainly didn't expect to be here for that long. Testament to the quality of discussion, although it has gotten a bit partisan of late. I was on Slashdot prior to that for about 10 years. What was most appealing about HN was the information density, and the discouragement of jokes. I guess if you distil a UI down to the basics (HN just being pure text) there is a certain timelessness to it. Slashdot soon felt bloated and stuffy and I never went back.
Having said that, the fact that the 16-20 and 21-25 is so under-represented doesn't bode well for the future of the website.
Edit: I think 36-45 was the largest group when I started writing the comment. It isn't now.
Reddit stats are had to come by, but I wonder if the users who use it for mostly news and text rather than interesting images/videos/memes (would old.reddit.com users be a good proxy?) has aged the same way.
I think "faster" and "flashier" content wins out in social media, so for example the text interaction people have left for twitter and Substack. Heck, compare pg's amount of public comments here vs all his content on Twitter, sama when he was still with YC, the other YC people, etc. (I mean they probably have alts but still).
I expect that certain ways HN was designed are becoming less attractive as a platform for the population at large, like the 80-character title limit so that it could fit a title in a single terminal line (although I personally love this more than I hate it, keeps things to-the-point).
I wonder what the TikTok version of the HN-type community is like?
It'll be like HN. I don't see where else it can go in terms of media delivery. Nothing seems faster than text to skim through. I could see an ML trained for your specific requirements so only the stories you like surface. I must click on 10% of the headlines and then engage with 10% of those, so that would save time. Then the text/commenting interface would be much the same.
> Having said that, the fact that the 16-20 and 21-25 is so under-represented doesn't bode well for the future of the website.
I don't think it necessarily says all that much; at that age many are probably busy doing a lot of other things: going out, dating, studying, getting your career off the ground, whatnot. Things like children that you may have later in life also take up a lot of time, but the patterns of that are different (e.g. more "quiet evenings" at home).
I'm 40 myself. I also came here from Slahdot. What attracted me to HN was that /. culture at the time (during 2000s) was VERY pro open source. In my youth I was a fierce OS advocate, including founding a LUG and whatnot.
Reading HN comments and stories at that time felt fresh: There were startups making money with software, there was people that valued different things and could have a good discussion. I think it was me naturally maturing from my 'communist' youth to 'capitalist' adulthood.
Funnily as time passes it seems theres more pro-open source feeling in here. Even some of the Destop Linux discussions that happen here remind me of old /. discussions. And it's hilarious that I'm often on the opposite side of the argument from when I blindly defended Linux 20 years ago.
The fact that the ranges aren't equal makes it pretty useless to parse, unless entered in a spreadsheet later, and I couldn't be bothered to do that.
There's no reason to have one category for the 5 years 16-20, and the most common age group of Internet savvy working age adults to be lumped in two 10 year "26-35" and "36-45" ranges.
My first programming job was at a survey place. Once some high paid survey writer flew in to get one out in a hurry. I was told to sit with him and build it while he designed it.
Ever since then I've though about surveys differently. The level of thought that he put into not only each question, but every word. Considering how one question might influence another would cause a change in order, etc. Anyway, it was fascinating to see his thought process, compared to being handed the finished product like we normally saw.
Sure, but this is a forum for entrepreneurs and software engineers, it does not target the world demographic.
To be honest, I don't understand what "they develop faster" means either. One year of age is objectively the same length whether you're 10 or 90. What has growth speed and brain development got to do with anything?
I posted this exact poll this week, with proper ranges, but deleted it when I saw that HN had re-organised the items seemingly at random (just as it must have done here as well).
I wonder if the moment this poll was published has any impact on its results. I.e., if it was published on a Tuesday during business hours would there be a different audience than the people reading HN over the weekend?
I wonder if HN would benefit from a [serious] tag the way some subreddits use it. Though, if OP could give a longer description of why they're running such a poll (I guess to see the demographics) I would expect more people to answer seriously rather than give low effort/joke responses.
I think the serious tag is implied on HN. The people trolling the poll aren't doing so because they don't know it is intended to be serious, they're doing it because they don't care, and can get away with it (unlike with comments).
Hacker News is pretty serious compared to most social media, and I love that. Which makes some rare harmless comments or posts like this one actually good to encounter once in a while.
The seriousness-to-joke ratio of this site is just perfect in my opinion.
> If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “Fuck you” signs in the world. It’s impossible.
> It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you’d never guess what I saw on the wall. Another “Fuck you.” It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones. That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose.
I think that's also the point that J. D. Salinger may have been trying to make here.
Peace is a good, well constructed, true and correct data set. There is no peace. One must always correct for the lack of peace.
In any survey of humans, there will be some small percentage of the responders who are in a mood to just tweak the system. Distinguishing them from people who genuinely hold marginal beliefs (fake moon landing, flat earth) or even from people who socially adopt positions that they don't really believe (Jesus is returning in 2032, Kim Il Sung is guiding our leadership to victory) is often difficult.
Well a similar thing happened with roughly the same poll like 10 years ago. Moderation on this site has improved but it’s still grown a lot and there aren’t really consequences for lying here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734
Discovered HN looking over a classmate’s shoulder in discrete math class at ~20 or so. Now 33. Quit a bigco tech job, sold a yc startup, married my partner, had a baby. Still here. Lots of appreciation for the orange site and its many serendipities. Still one of the only places on the internet w real discourse between actual biz and technology experts.
Can't believe I'm reading here for almost ten years already, which means I've started at ~18. Kudos on everyone who is young and reading HN, or lobste.rs, or any other special interest group/community. I remember back then, I was still in high school, it gave me a lot of "dissonance" about "real world" (including me hanging around in the local hackspace) and what we did in school. I hated every single moment in school. Stay with your dreams, everything you do will matter at a later point in your life. Even if you're just having a series of never finished attempts, it somehow pays out at a later point. Curiosity is key. <3
I don't know what was the intention of the one who posted this poll, but for us in computing, it's relevant to know what we have experienced. For instance, if you were born last century, there's a good chance that you've personally experienced MS-DOS, Windows 95, and floppy disks; someone born this century might have started their computing life without having to worry about CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, high memory, and other 16-bit arcana. Someone born last century could have experienced the world before the Internet (and the dial-up world of BBS), while someone born this century most likely already had good Internet access as a child (in the developed world at least). And so on.
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36-45 is just as big as the 26-35 group, I must say I'm surpised!
I'm close to 42 and I've been here for 15 years now (as a reader more than as a contributor); when I joined I certainly didn't expect to be here for that long. Testament to the quality of discussion, although it has gotten a bit partisan of late. I was on Slashdot prior to that for about 10 years. What was most appealing about HN was the information density, and the discouragement of jokes. I guess if you distil a UI down to the basics (HN just being pure text) there is a certain timelessness to it. Slashdot soon felt bloated and stuffy and I never went back.
Having said that, the fact that the 16-20 and 21-25 is so under-represented doesn't bode well for the future of the website.
Edit: I think 36-45 was the largest group when I started writing the comment. It isn't now.
The HN demographics distribution is starting to skew older over time, compared to this older poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734
Reddit stats are had to come by, but I wonder if the users who use it for mostly news and text rather than interesting images/videos/memes (would old.reddit.com users be a good proxy?) has aged the same way.
I think "faster" and "flashier" content wins out in social media, so for example the text interaction people have left for twitter and Substack. Heck, compare pg's amount of public comments here vs all his content on Twitter, sama when he was still with YC, the other YC people, etc. (I mean they probably have alts but still).
I expect that certain ways HN was designed are becoming less attractive as a platform for the population at large, like the 80-character title limit so that it could fit a title in a single terminal line (although I personally love this more than I hate it, keeps things to-the-point).
I wonder what the TikTok version of the HN-type community is like?
It'll be like HN. I don't see where else it can go in terms of media delivery. Nothing seems faster than text to skim through. I could see an ML trained for your specific requirements so only the stories you like surface. I must click on 10% of the headlines and then engage with 10% of those, so that would save time. Then the text/commenting interface would be much the same.
> Having said that, the fact that the 16-20 and 21-25 is so under-represented doesn't bode well for the future of the website.
I don't think it necessarily says all that much; at that age many are probably busy doing a lot of other things: going out, dating, studying, getting your career off the ground, whatnot. Things like children that you may have later in life also take up a lot of time, but the patterns of that are different (e.g. more "quiet evenings" at home).
I'm 40 myself. I also came here from Slahdot. What attracted me to HN was that /. culture at the time (during 2000s) was VERY pro open source. In my youth I was a fierce OS advocate, including founding a LUG and whatnot.
Reading HN comments and stories at that time felt fresh: There were startups making money with software, there was people that valued different things and could have a good discussion. I think it was me naturally maturing from my 'communist' youth to 'capitalist' adulthood.
Funnily as time passes it seems theres more pro-open source feeling in here. Even some of the Destop Linux discussions that happen here remind me of old /. discussions. And it's hilarious that I'm often on the opposite side of the argument from when I blindly defended Linux 20 years ago.
Thats interesting - what do you feel changed in your view of open source?
The fact that the ranges aren't equal makes it pretty useless to parse, unless entered in a spreadsheet later, and I couldn't be bothered to do that.
There's no reason to have one category for the 5 years 16-20, and the most common age group of Internet savvy working age adults to be lumped in two 10 year "26-35" and "36-45" ranges.
Oh well. It's just for fun I guess.
My first programming job was at a survey place. Once some high paid survey writer flew in to get one out in a hurry. I was told to sit with him and build it while he designed it. Ever since then I've though about surveys differently. The level of thought that he put into not only each question, but every word. Considering how one question might influence another would cause a change in order, etc. Anyway, it was fascinating to see his thought process, compared to being handed the finished product like we normally saw.
Yeah, surveys done for actual reasons with skill are amazing.
Most surveys are not done with any such skill - they’re done to get the result desired.
Basically what every student in the social sciences learns.
Every introductory textbook on empirical methods has a chapter on surveys and questionnaire design, and there are also specialized books just on that.
Tech would sometimes really do well in listening to people outside its field.
1 reply →
I could understand smaller age ranges for younger folks because they’re developing at a more rapid pace.
For example 30-40 age range would group together people with relatively similar life experiences, but a 10-20 age range would not.
Sure, but this is a forum for entrepreneurs and software engineers, it does not target the world demographic.
To be honest, I don't understand what "they develop faster" means either. One year of age is objectively the same length whether you're 10 or 90. What has growth speed and brain development got to do with anything?
4 replies →
26-35 is the most difference, I think. Very different stages of life for most people.
Makes sense for a height survey.
I posted this exact poll this week, with proper ranges, but deleted it when I saw that HN had re-organised the items seemingly at random (just as it must have done here as well).
If you're 105, should you upvote both 96-105 and 105-255?
yah. This is clearly wrong. If you are 105 or more, you should be able to vote as many times you want… you legend!
If you’re 105 and still taking internet polls you’ve gained age but not wisdom
Who uses inclusive upper bounds? My complaint is that 15, 25, 35 etc are missing...
I wonder if the moment this poll was published has any impact on its results. I.e., if it was published on a Tuesday during business hours would there be a different audience than the people reading HN over the weekend?
> 105-255
> 2 points
Why am I not surprised.
I wonder if HN would benefit from a [serious] tag the way some subreddits use it. Though, if OP could give a longer description of why they're running such a poll (I guess to see the demographics) I would expect more people to answer seriously rather than give low effort/joke responses.
I think the serious tag is implied on HN. The people trolling the poll aren't doing so because they don't know it is intended to be serious, they're doing it because they don't care, and can get away with it (unlike with comments).
NAK.
Hacker News is pretty serious compared to most social media, and I love that. Which makes some rare harmless comments or posts like this one actually good to encounter once in a while.
The seriousness-to-joke ratio of this site is just perfect in my opinion.
4 replies →
Maybe all posts should be regarded as serious by default unless they have a [joke] or whatever tag.
The fact that the ranges include ages > 105 and that there are many answers to it just makes the post some kind of spam.
IKR, what a waste of an 8th bit, when a 7-bit integer would have met the requirements. Software bloat has reached new extremes.
If you give people power, they'll use it to fuck with it.
- Boaty McBoat Face
From The Catcher in the Rye:
> If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “Fuck you” signs in the world. It’s impossible.
> It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you’d never guess what I saw on the wall. Another “Fuck you.” It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones. That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose.
I think that's also the point that J. D. Salinger may have been trying to make here.
Peace is a good, well constructed, true and correct data set. There is no peace. One must always correct for the lack of peace.
Probably u8 underflow from time travelers and unborn babies visiting the site.
I think it's all the humans in reptile shape that can live up to 250 years old filling in their real age. Proof David Icke is right!
"Lizardman’s Constant Is 4%"
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
edit: as of right now 105-255 is sitting at 3.6%, which is pretty close to the constant of 4%.
In any survey of humans, there will be some small percentage of the responders who are in a mood to just tweak the system. Distinguishing them from people who genuinely hold marginal beliefs (fake moon landing, flat earth) or even from people who socially adopt positions that they don't really believe (Jesus is returning in 2032, Kim Il Sung is guiding our leadership to victory) is often difficult.
Well a similar thing happened with roughly the same poll like 10 years ago. Moderation on this site has improved but it’s still grown a lot and there aren’t really consequences for lying here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734
Everyone's converting to Greenland shark years.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37047168
It's a big enough age range so people probably think it's a joke answer. And because you can vote multiple times, there's no harm in voting it.
Is this the "lizardman constant" showing up?
Why am I not surprised.
That's the "you insensitive clod" option.
Followed by a "How Old Do You Feel?" poll?
I am 30 but still feel 25. My dad is in his 60s but also still feels like he is 25. Lol.
I've felt about 55 since I was 15.
Discovered HN looking over a classmate’s shoulder in discrete math class at ~20 or so. Now 33. Quit a bigco tech job, sold a yc startup, married my partner, had a baby. Still here. Lots of appreciation for the orange site and its many serendipities. Still one of the only places on the internet w real discourse between actual biz and technology experts.
Why do I have to do maths to answer the question and why are all the answers negative.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734
Can't believe I'm reading here for almost ten years already, which means I've started at ~18. Kudos on everyone who is young and reading HN, or lobste.rs, or any other special interest group/community. I remember back then, I was still in high school, it gave me a lot of "dissonance" about "real world" (including me hanging around in the local hackspace) and what we did in school. I hated every single moment in school. Stay with your dreams, everything you do will matter at a later point in your life. Even if you're just having a series of never finished attempts, it somehow pays out at a later point. Curiosity is key. <3
Poll results: https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hnpoll.html?id=33480849
Looks like we have some old timers in here
Could you all please get off my lawn?
I was a kid, then I was a teen, then I was twenty-something, then I was something-something.
Oh god, I'm in the same category as the 45 year olds. Kill me now.
I‘m wondering about gender diversity of hn.
Is it sad that I had to think how old I am?
what is with the order of the poll options? they are ordered neither numerically nor by votes (?)
They're random on purpose.
Is age really an unsigned byte?
Age is definitely a signed byte, unfortunately. Nobody has ever reached 127, and -1 is valid for foeti.
In Korea you are 1 when you are born, so 0 would apply?
Frozen embryos might be even younger than -(9/12)
nope, just a 7-bit ASCII char
How do I cash my points in?
What’s the point of this ? And will there be a follow up poll “which month were you born on” ?
I don't know what was the intention of the one who posted this poll, but for us in computing, it's relevant to know what we have experienced. For instance, if you were born last century, there's a good chance that you've personally experienced MS-DOS, Windows 95, and floppy disks; someone born this century might have started their computing life without having to worry about CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, high memory, and other 16-bit arcana. Someone born last century could have experienced the world before the Internet (and the dial-up world of BBS), while someone born this century most likely already had good Internet access as a child (in the developed world at least). And so on.
we can interact with comments on the insight and value they provide and not thru the lens that 23% of HN poll responders used windows 95
And then another follow up what was the name of your first pet
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Yes.
MOST-POSITIVE-FIXNUM