This honestly makes me pretty curious. I thought the 25-34 range would be larger, especially compared to other sites that seem to have a much less professional atmosphere(Reddit, etc).
Hacker News certainly isn't some bastion of intelligent thought and discourse, but it's definitely above average in that, which makes me wonder if the 18-24 year olds are just keeping quiet in the comments, if they're really that smart, or if I'm actually a lot less mature/intelligent than I thought.
I think it is an accurate portrayal of HN and the results made me think "Yeah, I thought so".
HN's issue appears to be that it promotes what younger people view as an aspirational life style. College grads and young techie types will read stories about life at Google, joining startups that become large businesses like Facebook and will think to themselves "Yeah, I want a piece of that!"
In reality, HN can be poor for tech discussion and there are some absolutely insane comments on here, to the point where parody accounts like "Shit HN Says" have become very popular. It's an aspirational community with the best intentions, which is fine, but it won't bring the best in business or battle-hardened sysadmins to the table. You're far more likely to see a 22 year old college dropout gushing about how MongoDB is the future than someone that has succeeded in the environment that many people here aspire to join.
I'm 23 too. I'm not on 4chan, but it may be true that I'm a little bit more careful of what I say here than on reddit (depending on the subreddit of course).
Maturity and intelligence don't go hand in hand. Most of my intelligent friends act immature on a regular basis, and most of the older, 'more mature' people I work with don't display any noteworthy level of intelligence.
It's also pretty easy for anyone to act politely if they want to. Combine this with the generally accepted notion that a lot of intelligent young people are cocky and egotistical and maturity doesn't have much to do with intelligence at all (IMHO).
I am 23.25 and I do generally keep quiet. I would imagine the comments and submissions are generally by the older crowd who have more refined technical knowledge. As far as I can tell, the status quo is to only comment/post if you have expert knowledge on a topic
If you don't go to college and can find a good job, there's plenty of professionals in that range. I'm 25 and been programming professionally for 5 years.
Hacker News certainly isn't some bastion of intelligent thought and discourse, but it's definitely above average in that, which makes me wonder if the 18-24 year olds are just keeping quiet in the comments, if they're really that smart, or if I'm actually a lot less mature/intelligent than I thought.