What? No way - this is absolutely a case of function instead of pomp and circumstance. One of the huge reasons, I believe, that HN was really kicked off well was because when Digg went stupid and redesigned their site (which looks like OP's design to a degree) people wanted more hacker/programmer style stories in a denser, less ad-drive way. HN was perfectly placed and lots of folks came over (lots of the better users, that is). These people hated the design of digg (a.k.a. "scroll scroll scroll") and needed a more information dense yet content and comment rich environment. This place thrived as did reddit - both sites who offer very dense information pages (reddit has styles/options to make it less dense though).
So yes, design is a huge factor IMO. Startup folks, articles, good comments - all of that works together with the design. You can't say that HN works despite being "ugly".
And when I say it's ugly, I'm not really talking about style. Instead, I'm referring to how I have to pinch and zoom when reading posts on my smartphone, and the awfully long line lengths, and the small type.
I get that such points probably aren't important to pg (or the community at large) and I can appreciate that. If it works, why muck with it? Still, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the design of this site probably wasn't ever treated as a key concern.
What? No way - this is absolutely a case of function instead of pomp and circumstance. One of the huge reasons, I believe, that HN was really kicked off well was because when Digg went stupid and redesigned their site (which looks like OP's design to a degree) people wanted more hacker/programmer style stories in a denser, less ad-drive way. HN was perfectly placed and lots of folks came over (lots of the better users, that is). These people hated the design of digg (a.k.a. "scroll scroll scroll") and needed a more information dense yet content and comment rich environment. This place thrived as did reddit - both sites who offer very dense information pages (reddit has styles/options to make it less dense though).
So yes, design is a huge factor IMO. Startup folks, articles, good comments - all of that works together with the design. You can't say that HN works despite being "ugly".