I'm generally happy lurking, and I can lurk with the best of them (see 4 years / 35 karma :-)) To be honest I just don't have the time to comment often and karma (in a HN sense) means nothing to me.
My way of giving back to the community happens more in real life (aka meatspace, though I hate that term),more recently it's the connections I've made through HN and iOS meetups here in Tokyo that are the most valuable to me. I'm genuinely interested in what people are working on and people seem to find my work situation a lot more interesting than I had thought they would (I actually thought that when I introduced myself at my first HN meetup everyone would groan "Oh not another iOS dev").
I hope this isn't too off-topic, but would you be willing to describe the iOS scene in Tokyo? I always love hearing about what programming habits and techniques are popular in different countries. Would you say the community there embraces a fast-release philosophy or are they more like the big name devs (Square Enix)? Are any frameworks popular? Is iOS development big? What would you say is the most popular language in Japan?
Well my world is nearly 100% iOS and the iOS community I meetup with is probably a 5:1 foreigner:japanese ratio, so I'm not sure how their preferences translate to the native community.
-Some of the guys work for big companies and others in little startups doing contract work on the side.
-I don't know anyone serious about iOS development that hasn't invested 100% in learning obj-c.
-I haven't noticed any popular frameworks mentioned.
As for how popular iOS development is I'm not sure, probably less popular than Android (Android handsets are really common). If you are asking in terms of work possibilities, I get offered at least one or two jobs every HN meetup I attend.
My way of giving back to the community happens more in real life (aka meatspace, though I hate that term),more recently it's the connections I've made through HN and iOS meetups here in Tokyo that are the most valuable to me. I'm genuinely interested in what people are working on and people seem to find my work situation a lot more interesting than I had thought they would (I actually thought that when I introduced myself at my first HN meetup everyone would groan "Oh not another iOS dev").
Anyway my 2 cents for the year.