Funny, I became an avid /r/programming reader after reading all this groupthink bashing. There are very valuable discussions on Reddit if you ignore the obvious trolls and jokes.
I found Reddit's programming significantly more technical than HN, with most people talking from experience instead of guessing. Compare recent discussions on the same technical story on HN vs. Reddit.
Also HN gets to me because it harder to find reasonable arguments with completely opposed views without massive up/down-votes [by the masses backing their side]. Reddit [discussions] [often have] opposed but very insightful comments together and both [have] hundreds of up-votes.
The traditional HN bashing of other sites lowers the discussion and actually it's very typical of, er, Digg/Reddit (pun.)
programming at reddit used to be good, but the noise ratio got a bit too high - but I should check it out again (I was specifically referring to the rest of reddit, which is rediculous - so much so that I find it hard to take any subreddit seriously). I am sure there is a lot of brilliance there, but who has time for it with all the noise?
I prefer the tone of HN - there are certainly less arguments, but I don't think that's a bad thing - there are plenty of other places on the internet to have an argument.
There is no need for HN to become /r/programming when it already exists. HN was previously startup news - so I guess it keeps a bit of that flavour.
I haven't really noticed any website bashing from HN.
I found Reddit's programming significantly more technical than HN, with most people talking from experience instead of guessing. Compare recent discussions on the same technical story on HN vs. Reddit.
Also HN gets to me because it harder to find reasonable arguments with completely opposed views without massive up/down-votes [by the masses backing their side]. Reddit [discussions] [often have] opposed but very insightful comments together and both [have] hundreds of up-votes.
The traditional HN bashing of other sites lowers the discussion and actually it's very typical of, er, Digg/Reddit (pun.)