Yeah sure, but I'd say that 95%+ of things posted and discussed here require some form of understanding you only get when working in IT yourself or doing it as a hobby. I don't want to sound condescending but I doubt that HN would be interesting for the average brush cutter or just for anyone not being familiar with IT, that's why I asked :D
> I'd say that 95%+ of things posted and discussed here require some form of understanding you only get when working in IT yourself or doing it as a hobby.
This is just incorrect IMO. I work in marketing, I'm tech-savvy for a normal person but by no means an IT enthusiast, and there are plenty of business, history, economics, science, culture, etc. links and discussions on HN.
I'm a corporate lawyer (and not one that works for tech clients) and I have long had an interest in programming and tech. I'm not the only such person in my field, either. Software development has never been more accessible or high profile so I think these days you get people from all fields who may have an interest in it.
Why do you assume that a brush cutter is not familiar with IT or technological topics? People's backstory can be more complicated than most people expect.
> Why do you assume that a brush cutter is not familiar with IT or technological topics?
It's definitely not usual and it made me curious. Most of the people I meet who talk and understand IT also work in IT, or at least did once in their life.
I've never met a blue-collar worker who seems to understand IT. That doesn't mean that I'm saying that blue-collar workers are dumb or can't ever understand IT, the venn diagram is just very slim in my experience.
Sorry for asking I guess, I'm a bit confused by the fact that now two people have questioned my question, I didn't mean to be rude.
> People's backstory can be more complicated than most people expect.
I think you might also be looking at tech with a slightly narrower view. Silicon Valley Web 3.0 startups are one section of tech, but you’ll also see stories about John Deere and the right to fix farm equipment, optimizing motors, flood control, and whatever else on HN. Tech and hacking is a pretty wide field and every economic sector has its own definition of what constitutes “tech”. For some it’s optimizing excel spreadsheets, for some it’s crypto trading, and for some it’s about building better branch cutters.
I live in a small european country with the same amount of people living here as in New York City. The city I live in has 60k people. Maybe that makes it a bit easier for y'all to understand.
I really don't get why now a couple of people have told me that I'm wrong. I'm talking about my own, real-life experience, not some kind of mental, non-existing argument.
I am not saying that IT can't be a diverse field and that only IT people can know about IT - I'm saying that in MY life, I have never met someone who knows IT who doesn't also actually work in IT or did at some point in their life. So I was curious why an IT person started to work as a brush cutter, or how they got into IT etc.
The point everyone is making is this is not an IT forum. It’s tech (which includes machinery) and business. You can avoid IT entirely and still work a tech job. I’d dare say the vast majority of tech jobs are in no way similar to IT.
My point is that the commenter mentioned that they're a brush-cutter, while they have comments on their profile talking about Free-/NetBSD, Perl etc.
This made me curious about this persons background. These details just created a very interesting image in my head - brush cutter by day, Free-/NetBSD hacker during the night. If they don't want to go into it, fine, just figured I might as well ask.
Brush cutter here -- not at all insulted by the question! I'm actually a trained journalist, but at one point I needed better work-life balance. Agreed to help out my (late) dad's classmate who is a forester. Brush cutting and tree planting seem to somehow fit my personality (excellent for loners who like physical effort in nasty weather, lol), so I stayed.
As for BSD, Perl, Tiny Core Linux, Plan 9, etc -- I suppose I have a long-time intellectual interest in various "fringe" IT topics, computers as a tool for thinking, and repurposing old computers and ultra-minimal OSes in a meaningful way. I'm a horrible coder, but I love programming languages, lol. (I would have probably made a decent linguist, syntax or spoken language researcher, but oh well.)
Obviously, HN is an excellent place for folks like me -- people who are (always?) slightly lost in life. Unable to make big bucks (this is fine!), but still intellectually curious. It really is a perfect online environment, and IMO a remarkably good embodiment of free speech and democracy. Thanks HN, and thanks dang, for the excellent moderation!
