HN is like what Reddit used to be. Heavy emphasis on news, technology. Usually some interesting debate in the comments when they were added.

Found some screenshots from the early years:

https://www.reddit.com/r/historyofreddit/comments/q1zks/redd...

That's what I expected. It used to be niche.

It still is - it has just moved to the sub-reddit's now.

The only niche tech subreddit I know of that's anywhere near the level of discourse on HN is r/zfs, and even then, it's mostly people asking for help because they broke their zpool; it's just that the answers are often quite detailed in their explanation. r/sysadmin is Windows-centric but isn't awful in terms of depth of knowledge. r/kubernetes is mostly blog spam and "can you troubleshoot <problem I've put zero effort into solving> for me," and r/devops is mostly "how do I get a job in devops."

HN culture is quite like a subreddit IMO. The only real difference is that it doesn't receive drive-by comments and upvotes from redditors browsing /r/all while not subscribed to it. This helps to curb most forms of reddit humor

However; check out subreddits like /r/rust, it looks a lot like HN

For this reason alone, the two sites are night and day to me. I don't have the stomach or nerves for Reddit anymore, but I can sip the cool, refreshing draught that is HN all day long.

r/rust does look like HN, but that's for a very narrow topic. HN has broad topics with a niche user base.

Wonder how much of a difference it makes that most HN users can't downvote.