> Are there _that_ many people who are interested in reading about Bézier curves?
That’s how Hacker News works. To make the front page, enough people have to up-vote the article.
I think comments might influence the article ranking too, but I don’t know that. If you’re not interested in this topic, why comment on the article?
As to why there might be a lot of developers on Hacker News interested in Bézier curves, they’re used a lot, and they’re taught a lot. More or less all video games & CG movies ever made use them for animation & modeling. Most fonts in use are defined by Bézier curves. SVG & web animations use Bézier curves. Motion planning and mapping people use them for boundaries & routes. And those are just a few applications.
Heck, I started writing this primer back in 2011 because I needed to understand this stuff myself in the context of implementing font parsers and generators.
I commented on the article because I feel I see this topic come up more frequently than I would expect, and wanted to know if others felt the same way. Do you think that is too far off-topic of a discussion for HN?
No, it's not too far off topic, meta discussions are welcome, especially if you're genuinely curious. (Your phrasing & emphasis made you not sound particularly curious to me, FWIW.) This particular meta discussion, however, is less relevant than the topic of Bezier curves for HN in general. You can't have it both ways.
What good would confirming that some other people feel the same way do? We've already established that the fact people are both submitting and up-voting Bezier articles means that there are enough people interested, relative to other articles. The existence of this article on the front page means that the only thing wrong here is your own expectation that people aren't interested in Bezier curves, right? Personally, I'm pretty sure that some people reading HN don't care about Bezier curves, but I know for a fact that quite a few do, because enough people are posting and bubbling up articles on the topic.
I have no idea what percentage of the HN crowd cares about Bezier curves, but fortunately it doesn't take a majority to get articles on the front page. I love that niche topics come across the front page, that it only takes a handful of interested people. That's exactly why I come to HN.
So, enjoy it and have fun. If you want HN articles to have more things you find interesting, then submit and up-vote the things you care about.
That’s how Hacker News works. To make the front page, enough people have to up-vote the article.
I think comments might influence the article ranking too, but I don’t know that. If you’re not interested in this topic, why comment on the article?
As to why there might be a lot of developers on Hacker News interested in Bézier curves, they’re used a lot, and they’re taught a lot. More or less all video games & CG movies ever made use them for animation & modeling. Most fonts in use are defined by Bézier curves. SVG & web animations use Bézier curves. Motion planning and mapping people use them for boundaries & routes. And those are just a few applications.