44 years old when I built digg. Is that competing in the web2.0/social networking sphere?

The stuff that happened after we were funded (I've left the company) probably had a lot to do with my age, and the type of conventional wisdom (i.e. bullshit) that is out there and espoused by some of these commenters.

Remember that on the internet, noone knows you're a dog (or an old dog).

We already have reddit for hilarity. As one reddit commenter put it, "don't go over to yc. it's no fun there cuz they're all serious and shit."

I come to Hacker News to read and interact with people about start-ups and hacking related news, not to read jokes. It's not that I don't like to laugh, but there are a lot more popular sites on the web where you can be distracted and read funny stuff than there are where you can have quality discussions on a specific topic with interesting people like Hacker News.

This is rare. While community-oriented sites where you can read jokes/hilarious stuff/trolls are common and all over the place.

So when I want to be distracted, all I have to do is to open a new tab and go to reddit or whatever. HN is a special environment that must be preserved from this kind of stuff in order to keep the focused and quality discussions going on.

I'm going to go ahead and call this post a troll. It's a popular technique and is seen on nearly every niche forum at least once.

If you're too old at 33, then I'm too old at 34. :) I'm an ER nurse by trade, but I'm one or two semesters shy of finishing my degree in CS. I'm going back and getting in touch with my inner geek after years of having a "safe" job. I was talked out of getting into CS in 1992, because "there's not that much need for computer programmers". Sigh... I'd only recently moved to the states from overseas, so I believed them. Argh!

Anyway, what I'm focused on now is web development. There's nothing to stop us from learning this stuff. All of the important training materials for these technologies are on line or on Safari. There is a pretty steep learning curve, and expect it to take a while to become really proficient at it, but go for it.

And, I've spent the last 3 years paying off debt, moving to Silicon Valley, and getting ready to be a founder as soon as I'm done with school. So, don't let the kids scare you off. Dive on in, the water's great. :)

...and the coming rise of Indian entrepreneurship.

People are often too quick to cry racism, but I really think that's the only explanation for all these "India isn't a problem" stories.

Most Indian engineers are Java drones, but guess what... most American programmers are Java drones. And yeah, there's a new generation that's prosperous on relatively less effort, but have you taken a look at Silicon Valley lately?

Unless you believe that the American innovation engine is also slowing, you don't have a lot of reasons to believe that we won't see more and more innovation coming out of India. In fact, if there's a crash in outsourcing, it might accelerate that process (or simply shift the outsourcing market to target Europe).

Most of the "Ask YC" questions get answers the asker did not expect, so a poll would do no good.

The reason I come here is to read interesting articles, participate in discussions where I can have my views challenged by smart people, and (hopefully) contribute to these discussions in a meaningful way.

Not to degrade polls in any way, but they don't often add to the above reasons for being here. While I would love to chime in on which web framework is the best my observation is that:

a) the information I gain from reading a poll is minimal

b) the comments to a poll are less interesting than an ask YC link or a link to a story. The reason being that polls are (mostly) yes/no answers and tend to promote yes/no answers or flamewars.

Just my opinion of course. And since I come here to have my views challenged, feel free to do so. :-)