Forem: developuls

How to Post on Hacker News Without Getting Flagged or Ignored

aldin — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 21:26:34 +0000

So, you’ve written a killer blog post, built an awesome tool, or have a burning question for the tech community. Naturally, you think:

"Hacker News would love this!"

But before you hit that submit button, let’s talk about how to post on HN without getting flagged, ignored, or (probably worst of all) roasted in the comments. Because, yes - there IS such a thing as poor marketing.

I hope this won't end up being your typical “10 tips for HN success” fluff piece. I’m here to give you the real, nitty-gritty hacks that’ll help your post rise to the top—or at least avoid the dreaded [dead] tag. Let’s dive in.

⚠️ THE CRITICAL STUFF

(DO NOT MESS THIS UP)

1. Don’t share direct links for upvotes

HN’s algorithm is smarter than an average Joe thinks.
If you share your post link on your Slack, Discord, or wherever, and ask people to upvote it, those votes won’t count.

Let me say that again.
These votes WILL NOT COUNT.
Even worse, HN’s vote-ring detection might penalize your post.

Instead, focus on sparking organic discussion—comments are the real ranking booster.

For the push from friends and family, well, they will have to manually find your post on the HN /newest, /show, or whichever category you choose.

2. Don’t ask for upvotes or use sockpuppet accounts

Explicitly asking for upvotes is a big no-no.
So is using multiple accounts to manipulate votes.
Both will get your post flagged or your account banned.

Play fair, and let the community decide if your post is worth it.

3. Use specific, descriptive titles

Your title is your first impression.
“How we reduced API latency by 90%” will perform better than “Improving performance.”

Avoid clickbait, ALL CAPS, or excessive punctuation.
HN users value clarity and professionalism.

4. Post during peak hours (9 AM–12 PM Pacific Time)

Timing is (almost) everything.
Post during peak hours when the most users are active. Based on community observations, the best time to post is typically between 9 AM and 12 PM Pacific Time.

Avoid weekends and late nights (Pacific Time equivalent).
Engagement tends to drop during these times.

5. Disclose affiliations transparently

If you’re sharing your own work, say so.
Titles like “Show HN: My open-source tool for X” or “I built a new database” are fine.

Trying to hide your affiliation will backfire.
HN values transparency.

✅ HIGH-IMPACT MOVES

(DO THESE RIGHT)

6. Encourage organic discussion in comments

Comments are a stronger ranking signal than upvotes. Be ready to engage with thoughtful responses. If someone critiques your post, reply with data or reasoning—not defensiveness.

7. Include technical details and depth

HN users love deep dives. Share code snippets, benchmarks, or architecture diagrams.

If your post feels like a press release or marketing fluff, it’ll likely get ignored.

8. Don’t repost the same content

HN’s duplicate detection is robust.
If your post didn’t gain traction, wait a few weeks and try again with a new angle or title.

Reposting the same link will likely get flagged.

9. Engage respectfully in comments

Thoughtful responses build credibility.
If someone’s being hostile, don’t escalate.
Report abuse instead.

HN values civil, intellectually stimulating discussions.
Being an 🍑 probably won't go a long way.

10. Leverage “Show HN” and “Ask HN” correctly

Use “Show HN” to showcase polished projects and “Ask HN” for thought-provoking questions. Misusing these features (e.g., posting unfinished projects or trivial questions) leads to disinterest.

🆗 NICE-TO-HAVES

(still worth doing)

11. Write concise, scannable content

Use bullet points, subheadings, and short paragraphs.
HN users often skim, so make your key insights easy to find.

12. Monitor HN’s “new” page and engage with others’ posts

Build goodwill by upvoting and commenting on new posts.
It’s a long-term strategy, but it pays off.

I'm not talking about spamming random posts with comments just for the sake of engagement, but given you're posting to the platform, there is LIKELY something else there worth your attention as well.

13. Avoid editing titles after posting

HN’s algorithm may penalize posts with edited titles.
Choose your title carefully before submitting.

14. Leverage HN’s “second chance” system

If your post doesn’t gain traction, a moderator might give it a second chance if it’s high-quality.
Don’t delete it prematurely.

Check the /pool to see the second chance posts.

Posting on Hacker News isn’t rocket science.
It does require strategy and respect for the community.
Follow these tips, and you’ll likely improve your chances of success—or at least avoid getting roasted in the comments.

Now go forth and post wisely.
And if this post helps you hit the front page, well then, you know where to find me.

Build a food delivery app by only using open source tools

aldin — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 09:12:36 +0000

Just a quick TL;DR behind this one;

Imagine this: Like myself, you’re hungry. You grab your phone and open a food delivery app, ready to order your favorite dish.

It's quite common, we've all been there.
But how easy would it be to build one, using primarily open-source software for its logic? Let's see!

P.S. Do NOT build your own app while hungry.
P.P.S. There are plenty of OSS alternatives to some of the solutions I will mention here. For simplicity, I will use different ones across different articles.
P.P.P.S. Unless some of them put me on a retainer or something. Then I really can't 🤣.

Let's quickly dissect this kind of app, and extrapolate the basic building blocks and features. Excluding the core business logic, here’s a breakdown of the logical components of most food delivery apps.

Identity: Logging In

The first thing you see is a login screen. You don’t want to remember another password, so you opt for a quick passwordless login. Behind the scenes, SuperTokens can handle the authentication process, allowing you to log in securely without the hassle of passwords. It also manages sessions, ensuring your login remains active while protecting your data.

Access Control

Once logged in, your user role is verified. Whether you're a customer, driver, or restaurant owner, Permify can ensure you have access to the right features based on your role.

Browsing Restaurants

Now you’re scrolling through restaurants. All of this data — restaurant details, menus, ratings — can be stored in PostgreSQL, a powerful relational database. PostgreSQL handles complex queries, such as finding restaurants near your location or showing only those that are currently open. It ensures that your search results load quickly and are accurate.

Making a Payment

You select your meal, customize it, and proceed to payment. Here, Lago can step in, and handle billing and payments. Lago makes it easy to manage one-off payments and subscriptions (think meal plans) while integrating seamlessly with various payment gateways. You can save your payment details securely, and Lago ensures smooth payment processing.

Real-Time Notifications

As your order is confirmed, notifications start rolling in — your order is being prepared, your driver is on their way. This real-time magic could be powered by Apache Kafka for message queuing and AirNotifier for delivering push notifications to your phone. Kafka ensures that these notifications are sent reliably, and AirNotifier takes care of sending them via push notifications, SMS, or email.

Chatting with the Driver

Need to message the driver about a specific delivery note? The app’s built-in chat system, which could be powered by Rocket.Chat, allows you to communicate in real time. Rocket.Chat facilitates this interaction, making sure your messages are delivered quickly and reliably.

Tracking Your Delivery

If you're impatient like me, and every hungry person ever, you’ll be eager to see where the driver is. The app shows a live map of your driver’s location, which can be powered by OpenStreetMap and Mapbox. OpenStreetMap provides free, detailed map data, while Mapbox handles the real-time display and interaction. Together, they offer an open-source alternative to Google Maps, giving you a clear view of your delivery’s progress.

Speeding Things Up with Caching

To make sure the app runs fast, and not frustrate the hungry bunch, frequently accessed data like the list of restaurants or order histories can be stored in Redis. Redis acts as an in-memory cache, drastically reducing database load and improving the app’s response time.

Messaging in the Background

When you place an order, multiple tasks are triggered in the background — sending notifications, processing payments, and updating restaurant inventories. RabbitMQ can handle this asynchronous communication, ensuring that all these tasks happen reliably without blocking your main app experience.

Delivering Content Fast

Finally, within this setup, to make sure images, menus, and other static content load quickly, the app can utilize Caddy and MinIO. Caddy acts as a web server with automatic HTTPS, and MinIO handles object storage, serving images and other assets from locations close to the user to reduce load times.

This could be your architecture for an end-to-end food delivery app in your local area. The rest is:
1) picking the stack for your business logic,
2) integrating it all together,
3) polishing the visuals,
#) adding additional complexities (check the comment section).

What type of app would you like me to cover next?
I was thinking of a local trail maps app.

INTRO: Open-source app building blocks series

aldin — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 12:47:48 +0000

TL;DR

Back in March, I published a short piece titled: Start your own (side) business with open-source in mind.

Initially, it got some attention, but nothing crazy.
Then, at some point, it got picked up by daily.dev, and before you know it it got +100 upvotes on both platforms.

I'm not necessarily a hype chaser, but I can recognize when people ask me to fill a certain space.

I'm writing this as a pretext for a series of articles, each covering the open-source building block options for certain types of apps.

These are NOT sponsored pieces, nor am I (unless stated otherwise) affiliated with any of the open-source tools I will mention there.

Important efficiency lessons when writing for devs! ✍️

aldin — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 19:51:45 +0000

Pretty much everyone working in a dev-facing industry is bound to be to the point, at all times.

Yes, many of us were developers, and plenty still are.

Whether you are coding, demoing, talking, writing.
Whether you are drafting a CFP, or pull request comment...
At all times, you need to be clear and concise.

It takes a LOT of practice.

Approach breakdown

Becoming a to-the-point communicator requires more than skill; it demands a strategic approach.

While I'm still improving this skillset, here are some of the lessons learned, and fundamental pillars uncovered:

Practicing, a LOT,
Learning from the best,
Choosing the right hammer,
Understanding the platform.

A shocker, right?

Common sense - all of it.
But as common sense as it is, the common sense itself is not so common.

While practicing is self-explanatory, the rest of the list calls for further elaboration.

Learning from the best: Absorbing tips and insights

Dive into the content of your niche leaders.

Extract insights, not to imitate, but absorb the most effective communication principles.

What captivates their audience?
How well-structured is their content?
How do they balance brevity with depth?
The questions that will guide your evolution as a dev writer.

While everyone has a unique style, the basics of communicating efficiently remain consistent.

Oh, and if in doubt about who to learn from...
Make sure to check the Weekly top 7 of DEV.to.

Featuring the 7 posts that (partially subjectively but not too far away from the truth) performed the best in the last week.

Checking that regularly will help you grow organic reach and become more relevant on DEV.to.

Tooling excellence: Choosing the right hammer

What's the hammer anyway?
Anything that helps you stay productive.

* Copy

I use ChatGPT a LOT.
Yes, a LOT.

Is what you're reading a product of it - no.
I fine-tune my prompts a lot.
Then I fine-tune its results.
And add a bit of soul.

Can't leave you with the in the realm of speech and just sign my name next to it.

* Visuals

I use Canva for my visuals.
Add a little bit of flick just to catch your attention while scrolling.

Unless it's a meme, then no tooling, just simple C/P.

* Code snippets

This one depends really.
DEV.to has it's built-in way of handling code.
BUT, sharing code that might be changed is better from a place that can has a version control - for example GitHub Gist

Remember, it's not about the number of tools but their effect in enhancing efficiency without compromising on the quality of your message.

Different platforms, different approaches

Dev writers often find themselves toggling between blogs, forums, subreddits, X, hacker news, and LinkedIn.

It's crucial to recognize that these platforms require distinct approaches.

Not just the obvious ones (like X or LinkedIn) where structure and the length of the message are even more important than the message itself.

The depth of technical insight will vary.
The tone and the structure will vary for sure.
Tailor your content to meet the expectations of each platform.

In storytelling pieces, keep the story clear.
In tech blogs, delve into the technical intricacies.
In tutorials, explain like you'd want to be explained.

In all cases, keep it clear and clean.
Yes, keep a structure that's easily read.
And yes, don't ever compromise the quality for structure.
Let your experiences shine through with in-depth discussions.

And most importantly, reuse the same topic across different platforms whenever applicable.

Let's wrap

Efficiency in writing isn't a destination; it's a journey.
A journey marked by a commitment to continuous improvement, and an understanding of your audience.

Earlier today, I wrote a LinkedIn post about the same topic, yet completely differently.

Tomorrow I might start a forum discussion about it, or record a video of me explaining these things more visually.

The point is, you're the master of your ideas.
Don't let them restrict you to one form only if your audience is in more than one place.

Start your own (side) business with open-source in mind

aldin — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:55:57 +0000

This month I started my own DevRel advisory business and it's super fun tbh. Such an experience already, and it's not yet even properly launched.

It literally takes less than 2 days to set EVERYTHING up for static parts of your website.

This is the URL of my website: developuls.com.
It's quite a simple one, but it will grow over time.
Here is a quick walkthrough on how can you build your own
(or expand your presence from any of the platforms you are relying on to your own website).

Website components

CI/CD

Vercel is an open-source platform for hosting and deploying web applications and websites.

You can seamlessly use it as a part of your CI-CD pipeline. This is also where you'll connect your domain and never have to worry about it again.

Create a Vercel hobby (read: free) account (make sure to check if it works for you here).

Click the Add new... button on the right-hand side of your dashboard, then select Project.

If you already have your website code, just connect the Git repository with your Vercel account.

Otherwise, either start coding it or do what I did and check some of the many templates available and pick what best suits you.

After you're done with your site (or a part of it), and you want to deploy it just go to your project (on the dashboard), click the ..., and select Create deployment option.

Website Framework

As I mentioned in the intro, my website is fairly simple.

I built my website relying on the Astro and their template available on Vercel.
Astro is an open-source framework designed for content-driven websites.

Luckily, the framework itself was super easy to play with and to adjust the template to my specific needs.

I did struggle a little bit with in-project image rendering as it relies on Sharp whose v0.33.0 release doesn’t really play the best, but it was an easy workaround with simply storing my images on the cloud instead of the website repository.

Other than that it was joyful to use it, and I iterated super fast.

Contact form

As with any business, you want to be able to communicate with your (potential) clients.

I chose another open-source tool to hook up my business email address with my website's contact form.
Web3forms is an open-source solution (and completely free one) that sends HTML contact form submissions directly to your email inbox using their contact form api service without any server or backend code.

And you don’t even have to log in. Just go to their website and click the Create your Access Key button.

Then insert your email address.

Then copy the HTML form (which you can adjust per your needs).
and paste it wherever on your website you want your clients to contact you that way.

Finally, go to the inbox of the email you inserted above, copy the access key sent to you by notify@web3forms.com, and paste it instead of the YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_HERE placeholder of the contact form you previously placed.

Calendar integration

While I appreciate people reaching out via email, I find it much easier to understand their needs and pains while chatting with them.

Being a techie, I used another open-source solution here: Cal.com.

Cal.com is an open-source event-juggling scheduler for everyone, and is free for individuals.

You just create an account, connect it with your email calendar, and start getting calls scheduled.

The coolest part of it is it comes with a couple of embeddable templates you can simply add to your website. I chose the floating widget at the bottom right corner of my website so people can book a call with me to discuss a potential partnership.

Here is what it looks like on my website (see the bottom right):

It works with Google, Outlook, Apple, Notion, and plenty of other calendars, and you can schedule calls in any of the +20 options.

Real-time communication platform

If you're an open-source lover such as myself, you might go and connect Cal.com with the Mirotalk.

Mirotalk is an open-source, free, browser-based Real-time communication (video) solution, that you can use to replace Google Meet or any other commercial alternative you might've been using beforehand.

Wrap Up

Nowadays is super easy to get started with an online presence of a business. And most of the things we can think of exist in the form of open-source solutions.

How crazily good is that?!?

In my endeavor, I used a bunch of open-source solutions because it:
1) saves me some time from reinventing the wheel
2) is free
3) usually has a healthy community of contributors and people willing to help in case you get stuck anywhere.

Let's support some these open source tools on GitHub:

What open-source projects helped you bring your project to the top level?

🥋💻 Channeling the Karate Mindset in Tech Community Building 🤝🚀

aldin — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 19:08:59 +0000

Hello, Tech Buddies!
I've put writing aside for a while, again, but here I am, again. This time inspired by the tenacity and focus I developed in my karate days (let’s see if it lasts) — qualities that I now find invaluable in the tech world.

Dojo Lessons: Karate Wisdom Applied to Tech Teams

The journey from karate dojo to leading tech communities has been enlightening, especially in understanding the importance of balance.

In karate, the focus is on collective progress and individual skill development, much like in a tech team. Here, the aim is not to be the best coder but to synergize our diverse talents for innovative solutions. Just as karatekas leverage their unique strengths, tech teams thrive on combining diverse skills and perspectives.

In both the dojo and tech communities, the key is to support and challenge each other, leading to collective improvement. This approach helps in creating stronger, more cohesive teams, where knowledge sharing and collaboration drive success.

Understanding Our Tech Tribe; Beyond Code

In Developer Relations, truly connecting with your community means going beyond technical knowledge. It’s about understanding the people, their experiences, and their aspirations. Every community, like a dojo, has its own dynamics, and recognizing this is crucial for effective engagement and support.

Embracing Challenges: A Dojo Approach in Tech

Tackling challenges in tech mirrors the resilience and strategy learned in karate. Whether it's solving a complex bug or navigating project management, it's about teamwork, strategic thinking, and persistence—skills honed in the dojo and essential in tech.

Continuous Learning: A Shared Journey

Just as karate practice involves constant learning and skill refinement, so does the tech field. In Developer Relations, fostering an environment of continuous learning is key. Sharing resources, hosting discussions, and encouraging innovation are ways we grow collectively, much like karatekas sharpening their skills together.

Building a Collaborative Tech Community

The essence of building a tech community lies in collaboration and mutual support. It's about creating a space where diverse ideas and skills converge, leading to innovative solutions and professional growth. This collaborative spirit, reminiscent of a dojo, is what makes a tech community resilient and dynamic.

🥋💻 What are your thoughts on the parallels between martial arts and tech? How do you apply lessons from other areas of your life to your tech career?