I think the start-up community sometimes feels more like a self-help community than a bunch of cool dudes (and girls, occasionally) building cool shit. There's no secret to success and these kinds of lists are both trivial and highly tautological (sometimes even wrong, but plenty of people are posting about that).
Come up with an idea you think is good. Implement it. Get people to use it. Pay attention to feedback. There's nothing mythical about being successful. Sometimes, it's nice to get lucky, and many (many) times, you will fail. Go back to Step 1.
I'm only reading the OP because I'm at work, but if I were at home working on my "next big thing," the time spent would be much better invested opening up Eclipse or Notepad++.
Go ahead, downvote me. But after that, close HN and get back to work!
Not referring to you specifically (this is likely a case of Hanlon's Razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor), but this is a common tactic for soliciting sympathy upvotes -- "fishing for compliments" as it goes. It's about as bad as "upvote if you like X, downvote if you like Hitler" or "Does anyone else Y" style posts.
Given the contrarian nature of HN comments, disagreeing with the OP is typically quite safe. If your comment fits the mold of "stereotypical top comment on HN" then it's hard to believe that you're bracing for downvotes.
One of my favourite little books is La Rochefoucauld's Maxims [1]. It is a collection of ~500 such aphorisms, mostly relating to human relationships gleaned from a lifetime at the French Court.
Such writing may seem very superficial and empty, but it is in fact full of wisdom. It's just that you either have to have experienced it or go through the effort of putting yourself in the proper mindset.
I agree, you'd be better off building your product than reading pretty much anything. Reading HN is rarely the most productive thing you could be doing with your time.
I think the start-up community sometimes feels more like a self-help community than a bunch of cool dudes (and girls, occasionally) building cool shit. There's no secret to success and these kinds of lists are both trivial and highly tautological (sometimes even wrong, but plenty of people are posting about that).
Come up with an idea you think is good. Implement it. Get people to use it. Pay attention to feedback. There's nothing mythical about being successful. Sometimes, it's nice to get lucky, and many (many) times, you will fail. Go back to Step 1.
I'm only reading the OP because I'm at work, but if I were at home working on my "next big thing," the time spent would be much better invested opening up Eclipse or Notepad++.
Go ahead, downvote me. But after that, close HN and get back to work!