I discovered 4 patterns in popular Hacker News posts' title:
fun & curiosity, pain points, relate, in-depth technical
Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics
Does “building in public” work? (This is my post 😛)
从最早的人人网，到后来的知乎和本博客，我在网上写作也有十几年了。今天突然想列个合集，总结一下过往比较有代表性的文章。
我还记得文章是在家里的老 Windows XP 上敲出来的，也记得写到一半进入心流那种热血上的状态。现在回头读，当年高考结束后的意气风发依旧跃然纸上。那些只有高中生才能写出的文字，如今的我肯定是写不出来了。
这是我在人人（当时还叫校内）上发的第一篇日志，还听说语文老师会拿给她后来的学生看，也算是非常特殊的一篇文章。
当年学校把“第四教学楼”改名为“真维斯楼”一事闹得沸沸扬扬。我是激烈的反对派，便写了一篇檄文攻击学校，很快火遍了人人网。现今人人网早已不复存在，而这篇文字我也没办法在网上找到了。
快进到知乎时期，必须要提的就是这个回答了。我可能是第一个把清华恶心的学生互评制度（素测）公之于众的人。今天点开，你仍然能在评论区找到『看着好可怕，吓哭了(;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)”』这样的评论。曝光金字招牌背后的阴暗，这让当年的我无比愉悦。
当年凡是知道我账号的人几乎都会说“嘿我看了你写的那个回答”，还是挺有意思的体验。甚至直到今日，推理协会的新任会长还会问前会长“你知道这篇文章是谁写的吗？”
这篇回答流传并不广，但我很喜欢。对应试教育的声讨少说也有二十年了，然而大多分析根本就是隔靴搔痒，并未直指核心。其实，看透了应试教育，你也就看透了中国——正如这篇回答里写的那样。自然，你不能指望一篇几百字的文章把方方面面都讲透，但理解的人看完肯定理解了。
本博客于 2014 年建立，随后的几年是我文章的高产期，其中的代表便是这篇。本文是我研究生时期的思考和总结，比如你能看到之前文章里的线索汇聚成“出国”的结论。因为写于心智成熟的阶段，文章里的观点我现在依然认同（尽管有了更深刻的认识），因此说它是今天所写也没什么不妥。
当时我是抱着记录个人想法的心态写作的，后来陆续听到有人说本文曾给他们带来启发。相比于学渣回答里的阴湿吐槽，现在的自己有能力带给他人积极的影响，这点还是让人欣慰的。
一个观察，没太多可说的。
放上这篇算是夹带私货，但它确实是我最喜欢的私货了。但如果你玩过《逆转裁判6》，强烈推荐去读一下。
简单来说，我找到了游戏的“隐藏真结局”。写作本文的过程是一场奇妙的体验。从一开始的违和感，到回退存档从游戏里寻找蛛丝马迹，再到最后的抽丝剥茧得出结论，它让我第一次真正在《逆转裁判》里体会到当侦探的乐趣，而不仅仅是随着游戏进程大喊『異議あり！』。
真正的质变，将发生在完整接受了高中编程教育的学生念完本科走出校园的那年，也就是现在六七年以后。那时候，我们将见到一波从高中开始编程，上大学前已经明确志向，又经历了完整计算机科学本科教育的毕业生。这波毕业生的平均素质，将远远超出他们前辈同龄的时候。那时候，不光是转行的人，那些高中省份没有开课导致入门晚，或是大学光注重刷GPA不好好练手的，都将很难在就业市场中找到满意的工作——因为好坑都被更强的人占了。这种因人才涌入导致的竞争压力逐层传递，实际上已经在近几年的CS申请和求职中显现了。最上层的人找不到好坑自然就得去下一层找，下一层的人又得去再下一层，层层传递到最后，自然就要淘汰一批人。当然现在还只是量变，质变要等到前面说的那个时候。
这个预测并没有错，但我当时并未意识到大环境的重要性（i.e. 美联储的低利率）。而且随着各种 15 岁少年搞开源创业被收购的消息出来，实际上这个预测还是保守了——对于有条件和兴趣的孩子来说，他们根本不需要等到高中就已经有大量编程经验了。
一篇反驳 V2EX 老哥抽象发言的文章。
Yihong 曾经把本文放进他的 2019 年度推荐。正如散佚的『真维斯楼』一文所示，十多年前的互联网数据今日已无踪影，而这种数据保存的危机只会随着时间推移而愈发严重。『GitHub 是解决方案』这个结论，随着时间推移似乎也愈发确定了。
写于痛苦的升职失败之后，用血泪总结出的若干职场教训。本文似乎也帮到了不少人。其实我有过写续篇的想法，但鉴于我对传统的大公司升职加薪路径愈发不感冒，也不知道最终会不会写。
今年开始搞独立开发，写了一系列体验文章，比如这篇里记录了我推广 Clicknow 所做的各种尝试。未来应该还会写更多。
我的 HackerNews 巅峰。290 points, 212 comments，最高排名全站第三。写的时候我想过可能会火，但没料到会这么火，可能是正好切中了大家怀疑『build in public』的时代脉络吧（
暂时先这样，以后有新的再加。
See the discussion on Hacker News. Also check out an app I built:
clicknow.ai, AI-powered search with one click.
Since joining the indie hacker community a few months ago, I've been observing what everyone is doing with great curiosity. One thing I immediately noticed, is that everyone talks about "build in public". In case you're unfamiliar with the term:
(build in public) is an intentional practice of creating content and sharing your company’s story as it unfolds — with transparency, openness and vulnerability.
A common practice of build in public is to share the revenue of your products. I picked a random tweet just to showcase what it looks like:
At first I thought, "OK, everyone is doing it, it must be good". But a few months later, I'm starting to have some questions.
If you follow enough indiehackers like me, Twitter/X will start recommending posts for you. When I said "random tweet", I really meant it: similar posts are all over my timeline, and I literally picked the first one which took less than 5 secs. Based on my observation, out of 10 "build in public" posts, probably 5 or 6 are sharing revenue, mixed with posts like "how I boosted sales 100x in 3 months".
To be clear, I'm not against these posts. If I crossed the 1k milestone, I want to share it with the world too. But the issue is that, it seems people are more willing to post about their achievements, rather than ideas and plans about their products. Maybe it's because the achievement posts attract more attention? I don't know. But if I follow someone because of a product, I'm more interested in the product itself than the person behind it: I want to know what features are being added, what are the long-term plans, etc. Though, It could just be me.
On the other hand, it feels like some of the posts are merely just bragging. Sure, you made 10k, 100k MMR, congratulations. But do you really need to talk about it repeatedly like every day? How does it benefit the customers/followers, what value does it bring? None. It's just clickbait. Once and twice, it's inspiring and eye-opening, but more times, it just gets boring.
Ten years ago, when @levelsio was still a nobody, "build in public" was a brand new thing. You see, when everyone still followed the traditional route of build -> launch (mostly as a one-off effort), suddenly there's this guy who started sharing everything in a way that no one had seen before: what he was building, what worked and what did not, how much he made, etc. This naturally gained him a lot of attention and made him famous (ofc, along with good products).
Back in the days, "indiehacking" was also new, with few people doing it. Nowadays, things are completely different. The "Build in Public" community on Twitter has 33.3k members, r/indiehackers has 20k members, and indiehackers.com has 100K subscribers. The field of indiehacker is no longer a deserted square at midnight, it's now flooded with people: young students who dropped out of college, people who quit their 9-5 jobs to peruse a bigger dream, and people who get laid off and decided to never do it again. As Google trends shows, before Oct 2016, there were little searches of "indiehacker" or "indie hacker". Look at what it is today.
You might have guessed what I'm want to say:
When everyone builds in public, no one builds in public.
Let's admit it, the main purpose of build in public is to attract attention and build a community, so you can keep selling products. But when everyone is doing so (and some doing it exceptionally well), how much attention can you get?
It's weird to say this, but let's not forget that it's still the product that ultimately matters. Many successful indiehackers and solopreneurs don't build in public, or at least not in the popular way. Nick Moore (who built PopClip) tweets very little, and posted to the user forum only when there's a big update. Danny Lin (who built OrbStack) never shared its revenue, and only tweets occasionally. They build some of the best softwares that ever existed, and they don't build in public. All I'm trying to say is, build in public may be good and work for some, but it's not the only way, and you (as an indiehacker) should not feel any pressure for not doing it.
I'm still new and exploring. I wrote about my questions, but I don't believe I have an answer for them. If you'd like to discuss more on this topic, I'm on Twitter/X and Mastodon.
