like most people who post here you need to read Paul Graham's early work. professionalism is harmful to quality of work and especially so in startups. professionalism is an artifact of the industrial revolution and is not relevant in all fields. computer programming is to some degree post-industrial and professionalism is irrelevant and archaic for many programmers. criticizing a programmer for being unprofessional is like criticizing him or her for not being well acquainted with the phases of the moon and the effect those phases have on that programmer's crops.

rubbish. it is easily possible to be professional and produce excellent work. it doesnt have to be stuffy and haughty that's all :)

(and yeh I read his early stuff: not a fan. At every stage in a startup you have to get to a stage where you need to show some professional gloss to prove your not just another backroom programmer - IMO it is the core reason why a lot fail, they cling slavishly to that "fun guy" image and lose corporate custom because of it ;))

@the previous poster: I wouldnt call it unprofessional per se. Empassioned perhaps :D

sorry for the OT :)

If people didn't like Techcrunch, they wouldn't go to the site. If Techcrunch was irrelevant, they wouldn't generate massive leads for pet projects that people create.

these points are both true, but they don't alter the fact that Techcrunch is also full of shit.

If they are, why do people post TC articles on here every few hours?

I typically don't advise people to read articles that are full of shit.

I think people who whine about TC articles and think they are full of shit are in the minority. Their fan base seems to be growing rapidly. You can't impress everyone with your writing. And besides, TC is a blog. I think you're entitled to say whatever you want, even if its full of shit.

<i>TechCrunch is awful, but there's no excuse for the spit in the face incident.</i>

that's silly. I swallowed some water but there was a fly in the water somehow, it was wriggling, so I reflexively spat and your face just happened to be there. that's just one of many great excuses for spitting in somebody's face.

more seriously, there might or might not be any excuse for it, but if you thought it was anything but a matter of time, that's unrealistic. the appropriate response is just blogging that they're full of shit, but inappropriate responses still fit in an overall system of cause and effect.

html fail arrrgh

Use asterisks instead :)

why the hell would the judges die with a hard-on? that doesn't even make sense.

Because if you die with a huge hard-on, you go to hell.

Word order fail on my part. Revise to "waiting, with a hard-on, for these judges to die."

that's interesting but why is it on hacker news? what has it got to do with anything hacker newsy?

Exactly, we really don't need another "Fucked up things in the American justice systems"-news site.

API

ok, you know how all my posts about Hacker News being doomed rocket to the top spot on the site?

and this question isn't even on the front page?

THAT is why Hacker News is doomed.

if the people reading Hacker News WERE ACTUALLY HACKERS they would have already demanded an API, and this would be the number one topic of discussion. real hackers are more interested in getting an API than discussing why or why not their site is or is not doomed.

my blog posts on blah blah blah Hacker News is doomed SHOULD NOT be less interesting to hackers than a question about getting an API.

doomed, doomed, doomed.

Actaully, pg has been asked this before and his answer was 'Yes.'

So we're only doomed x 2.

can we get an API?

or, to put it another way, why not an API?