news.ycombinator.com• May 28, 2025• 1 min read
Advice for a Sick Hacker with NothingHey folks -- if you have it to spare, please allow me a couple minutes of your time.I absolutely love Hacker News. I started lurking here in 2009 or 2010, pointed here by Paul Graham, whose excellent essays were absolutely a staple in my early software development self-education. Let's call it 15 years, that's satisfying. All of this 15 years, I've lurked. I've never made a post here, and I don't believe I ever even created an account to utilize the voting features until a few days ago. That said, this is my favorite place on the internet. The interests displayed here very much overlap my own (or force my interest), and so many of you all are straight-up geniuses. I wanted to get that out first; it has bubbled inside me for 15 years.One of my favorite things is programming, ever since I requested "C For Dummies" as my 14th birthday present (frankly, great language choice, awful book choice.) Another love is using/learning Linux (I had to be the odd bird and choose Slackware, which I st