You can't underestimate the value of routine if you want to progress with the things you do. The more you do, the tighter your routine has to be. It's something I am constantly fighting with: trying to establish a routine and then stick to it. There are far too much distractions nowadays. It's almost like gathering information vs. applying that information and turning it into knowledge.
I feel you. Things like Hacker News, and the internet in general, tend to masquerade as "productiveness" when you (think) you're learning from them. But in the end, it's kind of like watching the Discovery channel: you think you're absorbing and learning a lot, but in the end, you've been so overwhelmed with edutainment that honestly you take away very little. A philosopher professor once asked the class "name one thing you've learned from the Discover channel," and to my surprise, all I could think of was "tons of things"
As far as I can tell, there really is no substitute for hands on experience. It's one thing to obtain knowledge, but quite another exercise to apply it. That's where routine plays in; it's showtime. I afford myself some time each day (during breaks, warm-ups, wind-downs) for some "half-distractions" like Hacker News, and on rarer occasion, a "full distraction" like going out, exercise, whatever. But I really enjoy the grind of coding because it's where I can see my ideas come alive, and look back at the day with the feeling "I now have more tangible assets."
I went through a period of several months feeling like crap because I wasn't producing anything, only thinking of a gazillion amazing ideas that merely lacked implementation. That all changes when you start to produce. Your routine forms around whatever you're doing, and at this point, it's no longer a challenge, it's a joy. The bonus is, I'm definitely not lacking in the "thinking of ideas" category... it turns out that for me having concrete implementations of things only helps me think of new ideas, much more so than even spending the entire day brainstorming. This makes sense in some way... any new ideas generally come from existing implementations, and if I make my own new implementation of something, I can now think of even newer ideas that beforehand would have been such a stretch to come up with.
As per routines, and hours/week, I don't think there's much point debating anything about it. Who says I'm not working while I'm in the shower, or sleeping? I've caught bugs in my sleep, and spent the dream debugging them. I think what matters far beyond routine is finding something that you're excited enough to work on to have that routine naturally form.
Something I find very useful about reading a site like HN is the little seeds it plants in my mind: I read about some interesting program/ language/ library/ framework/ technique/ theory or whatever, and then, six months later, I find myself needing such a thing and remember, isn't there that thing I read about?
Also, I'll discover something I maybe didn't even know existed and realise that I should learn about it; and so take a mental note to do so. Then, later, when I have the time and inclination to learn about something new, it's there on my list.
I agree. Every so often there's a post about something that can change my approach or direction to a problem I'm solving. Even if it's not relevant to what I'm doing, there's a wealth of information that's worth knowing. In a nutshell: HN is an extraordinarily good place for a tech entrepreneur to find out what he doesn't know.
However, in practice, I find it still takes a substantial amount of effort to filter the information I'm exposed to into something I can use in the near future. The amount of due diligence in figuring out if a certain technology (especially if it's new and if you lack experience with it) is a large enough barrier for me to usually continue on with what I'm doing. I simply don't have time to learn a new language every month, or learn how to migrate to new DB, or any infrastructural changes like that.[1] On the scale of things, I've prioritized "get stuff done" as #1, with "learn how to get better stuff done faster" as #2. HN is good at #2.
Like anything, HN is what you make of it. I personally love the fact that HN is so densely populated with the exactly the type of people whose opinions I actually respect (surprisingly rare for me), and who I'd like to network with. As a result of the amazing crowd here, I get to learn what I don't know at an astounding rate. From there I can leave it to my natural curiosity and ambition to fill it in.
Edit: [1] Another thing is, quite often people post things on HN merely seeking validation of what they're doing. So many blogs I read are about "Here's how I do something, and why you should, too. (And since I'm telling you to do it, it means I'm right)" which puts an even huger burden of due diligence on my shoulder. So I might have heard of xyz... but still don't know if it is worthwhile.
You say that you "take away very little" information as a result of reading HN.
I believe the information is in your brain, but only accessible at certain times. Your professor asked his question in a very difficult way. Suppose I asked you to tell me everything you know about programming and computer science? Would you be able to tell me everything you know?
When it comes to feeling unproductive on HN, I suppose it depends on your purpose here.
By comparison, Reddit would be a "full-distraction." On HN I get very knowledgeable opinions and advice that are relevant to what I'm working on. That's the good half. The bad half is that reading HN doesn't get work done.
I would not agree on that, it seems to me that github is used differently than sourceforge or the like. The vast majority of github repos is ruby and javascript of which the majority is most likely rails related. Lots of people also use it to host their private scripts and little tools, you don't have that on sourceforge where most of the big opensource apps are hosted. Maybe Rubyforge will suffer. Anyway, I like github a lot and appreciate the upgrade, but I don't think it will overshadow sourceforge anytime soon.
