A tale of two cultures
A tale of <i>three</i> cultures.<p>I had been to reddit and digg many times, but have never registered and never posted.<p>I came to hacker news years ago, jumped right in, and never looked back.<p>Why?  We can talk about all kinds of complex criteria regarding social networking, community building, people behavior, systems behavior, etc., etc., etc., but let's not overlook the most basic thing of all: <i>it's simple</i>.<p>Simple font, simple layout, threaded conversations, limited options.  Easy to read, easy to explore.  No "sub-reddits", no fancy filters, no complex algorithms begging to be gamed (well maybe).  None of the stuff that people keep asking for to make us "more like digg or reddit".<p>It's so simple that we actually focus more on the content than anything else.  There's a lesson for all of us developers in there.