Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering another, better universe

Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by bawolff on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:15PM (#50431323)

A couple years ago it was all about blockchain or complaining about blockchain. I think hyped technology just gets tiring really fast.

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Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by true_religion on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:23PM (#50431445)

[delayed]

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Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by B4uler5 on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:50PM (#50431918)

Yeah? You reckon they are on the same level? I wasn't there but I find it hard to believe people were as worried about PHP as they are blindly prompting an LLM for 10 hours a day.

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Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by llm_nerd on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:26PM (#50431507)

For a period it was endless NoSQL submissions. Then endless Anti-NoSQL submissions. Then there was the Ruby period where every Ruby release yielded endless submissions and murmurations. Then that turned to Go. Then, as you said, how we all needed to become blockchain experts and everything was going to be built on blockchains, also did you see some random retailer uses a payment processor that through a long and convoluted process will let you pay with BTC?

At every juncture there have been people reminiscing about the good old days that never actually existed at all. About how great it used to be compared to day.

I think the funniest are the constant "man, remember when the BIGS used to engage with us proles?" Ignoring that there are still many founders and the like hanging out here, present, future and past, what a weird thing to reminisce about. It's like "I used to be in the presence of people who mattered". I mean, matter yourself, because pretending you're in a club with them is foolhardy.

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Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by tavavex on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:28PM (#50431562)

The prevalence of blockchain-related tangents then is nowhere near the amount of LLM discussion injected into every topic today, it's not even close.

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Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by red-iron-pine on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:30PM (#50431595)

the amount of money invested into AI is far in excess of the blockchain

and LLMs are good for only a few things, one is shitposting

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Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by ricardobeat on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:06PM (#50432937)

And here is another thread of people picking at each other.

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Re:Going back two years on Hacker News is like entering anot... by nunez on Monday November 09, 2026 @06:37PM (#50433938)

i was going to agree with you but before doing that I went to Algolia to confirm that this was the case [^0]

it is definitely not the case

This year's most popular posts are mostly about AI. That was not the case for 2020 [^1], 2018 [^2], 2016 [^3] or 2014 [^4].

[^0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1798502400&dateRange=custom&...

[^1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1609113600&dateRange=custom&...

[^2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1545868800&dateRange=custom&...

[^3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1482710400&dateRange=custom&...

[^4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1419465600&dateRange=custom&...

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