I use my real name here and in a few other online communities. The choice wasn't intentional. I'm just really self-critical about the dorkiness and unoriginality of any usernames I'm able to come up with. (Pop culture, video game, and sci-fi references tend not to age gracefully beyond a certain period in one's life.)
HN has been my first major experiment with RealName™. It's gone fairly well so far. People who want to talk shop can get a hold of me. People who want to talk trash can get a hold of me, too, but fortunately those people seem few and far between. Prospective employers are free to search my corpus on HN, and in doing so, they'll probably find better content than they would on Facebook or elsewhere. In fact, I've had some opportunities come my way via HN that probably never would have elsewhere. (AngelList is the one possible challenger in that respect.)
Most important: using my real name forces me to think before I post. That's not to say everything I post here is a gem. Far from it, as the record shows. But I don't mind that the record shows something here.
I first tried using my real name back when blogging started (around the same time as Journaling file system buzz on Linux). It was difficult to switch gears from attention seeking.
I "lurk more" when using my real name since I try to use communities where other people are more insightful than me.
Also I noticed a common pattern of "20 questions" when I was using aliases about innocuous Questions Answered Frequently that over time eroded my confidence in my anonymity. e.g. vim versus emacs is one of the 20.
"I try to use communities where other people are more insightful than me"
Those are the best kinds of communities! Maybe that's part of the reason why I use my real name here: this community keeps me honest (and on my toes). I'm not sure whom to attribute it to, but the old quote applies: "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room."
Let's just say that, on HN, I never feel as though I'm in the wrong room. :)
HN has been my first major experiment with RealName™. It's gone fairly well so far. People who want to talk shop can get a hold of me. People who want to talk trash can get a hold of me, too, but fortunately those people seem few and far between. Prospective employers are free to search my corpus on HN, and in doing so, they'll probably find better content than they would on Facebook or elsewhere. In fact, I've had some opportunities come my way via HN that probably never would have elsewhere. (AngelList is the one possible challenger in that respect.)
Most important: using my real name forces me to think before I post. That's not to say everything I post here is a gem. Far from it, as the record shows. But I don't mind that the record shows something here.