The fact that HN is a site that performs a function very similar to Reddit, and happens to be written in a dialect of Lisp is completely coincidental :-D (unless there has been some comment by pg about his motivations for making HN that I missed, but I kind of doubt it).
I believe pg stated that HN was supposed to be what reddit was originally.
Re:Rewriting Reddit (2005)
by linuxydave on Monday October 27, 2014 @06:16PM
(#8518491)
>I'm pretty sure he was referring to the part of the article that mentions the folks on comp.lang.lisp who were discussing writing a competitor to Reddit in Lisp.
Yep, spot-on. It's the same with those guys who wanted to make a Facebook clone focused on privacy or whatever. Lots of talk and then you never hear about the project again.
Re:Rewriting Reddit (2005)
by ryanfreeborn on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @02:30AM
(#8519770)
You mean Diaspora? (or maybe there's another clone I missed out on). The founder of Diaspora committed suicide. I think the project mostly died with him.
Wow, I didn't know about this suicide :(
Is the project really dead though? I have no personal experience, but these stats show a growing number of active users: http://pods.jasonrobinson.me/
Re:Rewriting Reddit (2005)
by ryanfreeborn on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @09:42PM
(#8525006)
Oh interesting. I didn't know it was still moving along. It had a lot of momentum a few years back, but hasn't been making nearly as much noise since. Not sure if the founder's suicide actually correlated with the dropoff in media attention.
Re:Rewriting Reddit (2005)
by linuxydave on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:50AM
(#8521215)
Didn't know about Diaspora or the suicide. Sorry to hear that it happened :(
The discussion was not about writing a new Lisp or Lisp-like language, but a clone of Reddit.
The fact that HN is a site that performs a function very similar to Reddit, and happens to be written in a dialect of Lisp is completely coincidental :-D (unless there has been some comment by pg about his motivations for making HN that I missed, but I kind of doubt it).