A programmer who hadn't written a blog post in 14 years just published a quiet, personal essay called "Hello, me. It's been a while" — and it hit 144 points on Hacker News with 59 comments. No code, no frameworks, no technical deep-dive. Just a person talking about the simple act of being silent long enough to hear themselves think.
The essay struck a nerve because it describes something almost everyone in tech has experienced but rarely talks about: the disappearance of unstructured thinking time.
What the Post Says
The author describes a subtle change that crept into their life over fourteen years. As responsibilities piled up and free time became scarce, they started filling every quiet moment with podcasts, audiobooks, or social media. Whether at the gym, cooking, or cleaning, there was always something playing in their headphones.
Eventually, they built a habit: whenever it was quiet, their immediate instinct was to turn something on.
The realization came when they noticed they used to talk to themselves a lot more. They describe themselves as a slow thinker — it takes a few minutes just to get thoughts moving in a direction, but once they pick up momentum, they can spend fifteen or thirty minutes exploring an idea. Their inner voice, they note, is something nobody else has access to. And it's an important part of their life.
The turning point was simple: one day, reaching for the play button out of habit, they stopped. They thought: what if I just do this chore in silence today? At first it felt uncomfortable. But after a moment, their thoughts started to flow. And it felt so much better than drowning them out with another podcast.
Why This Hit 144 Points on HN
Hacker News is a community of builders, makers, and thinkers. The response to this post reveals something important about the tech community: we're drowning in information and starving for silence.
Developers, in particular, face a unique version of this problem. Our work requires deep, sustained thinking — the kind that takes minutes to get into and hours to fully develop. But our information consumption habits — Twitter, Discord, Slack, RSS feeds, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube — are designed to fill every gap with content.
The result is a generation of developers who can produce code but struggle to think. Not because they're not smart, but because they never give themselves the silence needed to form complex thoughts.
The Science of Silence
Research supports what the author experienced intuitively. Studies on default mode network activity in the brain show that the mind's most creative and integrative thinking happens during periods of apparent inactivity — when you're not focused on any particular task.
When you're washing dishes in silence, walking without headphones, or sitting without your phone, your brain isn't idle. It's consolidating memories, making connections between ideas, and processing unresolved problems. This is why you often have your best ideas in the shower — it's one of the few remaining silence zones in modern life.
Filling every moment with content suppresses this process. You get more information but fewer insights. More input but less integration. More data but less wisdom.
The Developer's Paradox
There's a particular irony for developers. We build tools that consume attention — notifications, feeds, real-time updates, infinite scroll. Then we use those same tools and wonder why we can't think straight.
The most productive developers I know have rituals that protect their silence:
- Morning walks without headphones
- Commutes without podcasts (or no commute, replaced with a silent walk)
- Writing sessions with all notifications off
- Thinking time blocked on the calendar, treated as seriously as meetings
These aren't productivity hacks. They're survival strategies for the mind.
What the Comments Said
The HN comments on this post are worth reading because they reveal how many people are experiencing the same thing. Multiple commenters described similar experiences — losing their inner voice to constant content consumption and finding it again when they deliberately created silence.
Several commenters pointed out that the problem has gotten worse with AI. When you can get an instant answer to any question, the space for wondering — for sitting with not-knowing — shrinks further. The temptation to fill every moment of confusion with a quick query rather than sitting with the problem and thinking through it is powerful.
But the best problem-solving often comes from sitting with the confusion. The moment before you reach for the answer is where insight lives.
Practical Takeaways
If you're a developer (or anyone who works with their mind), here are some practical steps inspired by this post:
1. Create silence zones. Identify times in your day that are currently filled with content and deliberately leave them silent. Dishwashing, walking, waiting in line, driving.
2. Don't reach for your phone immediately. When you finish a task and have a moment before the next one, resist the urge to check your phone. Sit with the transition. Let your mind settle.
3. Schedule thinking time. Block 30 minutes on your calendar for "thinking" — no agenda, no output expected. Just sit with a problem (or no problem) and let your mind wander.
4. Notice the discomfort. The first few times you sit in silence, it will feel uncomfortable. That discomfort is withdrawal from constant stimulation. It passes.
5. Write to think. The author of this post found their voice again by writing. Writing is thinking made visible. Even if you never publish it, writing helps you hear your own thoughts.
The Bigger Picture
The "Hello, me" post is a small, personal essay. But it touches on something large: the quiet erosion of inner life in the age of infinite content. We've built a world where silence is the exception rather than the default, and we're paying for it with our ability to think deeply, create originally, and know ourselves.
The author ends with a simple invitation: if you've lost your inner voice, give yourself a shot. Don't play anything in the background. Just sit in silence for a moment and see what happens.
You might actually like it. And you might find that the voice you've been missing has been there all along, waiting for you to turn everything else off.
