It was a kind of fuel while I worked at a grocery store trying to build some software that I thought would be game changing (it was a new kind of text editor that would break documents into interactive 'tiles' around grammatical boundaries[0]). Eventually it was on the front page here and I got tons of feedback, most of it good; and while I wasn't fortunate enough to get funding or anything, it's been a big part of why I've been able to get some pretty good/interesting work.
And, one day I'll post another project here and the world'll love it and all my problems financial and otherwise will be solved forever and all of humanity will live happily ever after etc. :P
I also have learned lots more about programming languages and various other CS topics than I likely would have without HN.
I also poured over HN while working dead end retail for 3 years. It quite literally sent me into the mental health system.
I picked up a heeeap through osmosis, did a dev bootcamp for web dev/JS/React, spend a year being rejected from places, did almost nothing but self study + Github projects at the same time, self learnt Python and it finally paid off this past October with an offer.
I started my position as a graduate Site Reliability Engineer this last Monday since it's my employers inhouse program where grads rotate 4 times (ie frontend, backend, mobile) in the first year before settling into a position. Personally, I have 2x 6 month rotations of SRE and Cloud Data and it's very exciting!
Come to think of it, I've still been meaning to write a post about all the "junior" positions I was rejected from. It really sucks when you're starting out.
One startup who I did a test with, and never got a response, actually went bankrupt earlier this year which was a weird feeling.
And, one day I'll post another project here and the world'll love it and all my problems financial and otherwise will be solved forever and all of humanity will live happily ever after etc. :P
I also have learned lots more about programming languages and various other CS topics than I likely would have without HN.
[0] http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext