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If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?

212 points · 100 comments · signa11

  1. hobo123 · · focus · HN ↗
    What a post. On Stack Overflow without karma you couldn't even comment on wrong answers, fix them or anything. I would spend time on there looking for questions I could answer in hope I could get enough karma, but I didn't.

    Deleted my account after a while and never looked back. Also toxic community in general.

    So glad now I can just spar with AI to troubleshoot stuff.

    1. veeti · · focus · HN ↗
      The Stack Overflow generation pulled up the ladder a decade ago, and now that they have already "made it" they can spend all day writing romanticized takes about how great their little club really was.

      Meanwhile, the rest of us still have work to do and can't spend all day arguing with strangers on the internet. Not all even speak English at all.

    2. AndrewKemendo · · focus · HN ↗
      100% this

      I really don’t know where all these rose tinted glasses are coming from about early web communities.

      As a teen trying to learn to code with no help at home and no money, going onto a technical forum you had to steel yourself to being ostracized for not already being an expert.

      I mean people on hacker news in 2026 don’t appreciate how terribly toxic and not friendly at all this site itself was in 2012 when I joined.

      I mean hacker news itself has had the reputation of being full of the most toxic technical people in the responses, and you know the dropbox response is exactly the precise reason this place has the reputation it does

    3. estetlinus · · focus · HN ↗
      Yeah, I remember struggling to even post a question until I gave up. Calling it a community sounds like nostalgia.
    4. mangodrunk · · focus · HN ↗
      Agreed, StackOverflow was and continues to be a toxic “community.” In addition to toxic behavior, the site has issues with bad answers being selected or what were once correct are now outdated.

      It’s also funny how he bemoans billionaires but he himself is a centimillionaire who sold StackOverflow for $1.8 billion.

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