Paul, I would like to thank you for building this site. I realize that this site is vary good press/PR for YC, but the value that its providing to me personally is incredible and the interactivity has me hooked. This is the best site that I have come across in the past 2 years.
YC news is really the best thing that has happened. You know when I got rejected from Y, I was upset. But learning from the rejection, I finally found a 'hacker' to add to the team and now we're brainstorming away.
So yes, the Y, its news and 'rejection' was a very good thing. Not to mention reading some really great comments from the community itself.
I really like it too. However, there are many people here who would love to get funding from YC one day and this probably influences the sorts of things that they talk about.
For example, you may find many posts on lisp but few on java. This is particularly strange given that Google's gwt is probably the best way to build ajax apps.
It's been great for me to meet other like-minded developers. Some of the guys I've met here I probably wouldn't have come across otherwise. That's been a huge value for me along with the shared knowledge on how to solve particular problems.
Usually if a discussion gets interesting in the comments section, I or the other person will make direct contact so we can talk offline. Sometimes it's really more efficient to talk on the phone or in person when exchanging ideas - it's also just fun to make a personal connection with like-minded developers and talk shop.
I also happen to live in the bay area which makes it easy to meet people from news.yc in person at tech events.
I suppose this really is the best alternative for someone so far from the valley or cambridge. Lots of nuggets in these archives. I hope everyone appreciates the power of what is happening here.
