Fromthe mouth of CockraochDB's CTO: ‶So if we were starting at this point in time, I would take a hard look at Rust, and I imagine that we would pick it instead of C++.″
> However, modern HN just feels so deeply cynical, angry, and negative with much less of the entrepreneurial tech optimism of the older posts
Isn't that a direct reflection of the current state of the tech world? Since the 00's, it has morphed from a rather hacker-friendly, digital far-west into a locked-down plutocracy dominated by a handful of gigantic corporations, whose end-goal are quite often to squeeze every single last bit of personal information or other valuable commodity they can out of, typically, misinformed users.
E.g., despite all the folklore, I feel much better toward 00's ‶Linux is cancer″ MS and their Windows 2000 than toward 2020's ‶We <3 Linux″ MS that just spy on me through Windows 10 and put ads in my start menu.
Similarly, I prefer the 90's ‶we're making expensive and original computers″ Apple to the 2020's ‶we will scan all the photos on your device″ Apple.
And it's not to single these two out, they're just the first examples I'm thinking of. All in all, I just believe the whole digital world is much more hostile now than it used to be, which would, at least partially, account for the growing apathy, cynicism and defiance in the community – it's hard to feel any different when every other week brings a new personal data leak, spyware scandal or privacy-infringement affair, be it corporate- or state-sponsored.
At the same time, you can't expect Wiki editors to be expert in all cutting-edge domain of knowledge to be able to determine which academics are or aren't notable.