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Why Lisp is a Big Hack and Haskell is Doomed to Succeed (2011)
2013 Update: I was young and stupid when I wrote this. I fear that Haskell is doomed to succeed. — Tony Hoare I ♥ Lisp. I think it's t...
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 415 posts.
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The Dentist Office Software Story
I’ve been telling this fictional story about Dentist Office Software for years to describe why we are so focused on our “networks” investment strategy. Yesterday I told it at a HackNY event we did at the USV office and my partner Albert provided a finishing touch that really drives it home. Since I’ve never told […]
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“Startup Names” by Paul Graham (2006)
[This was originally published on the now-defunct Infogami and was surprisingly hard to find online, so I put it here. I’ve added commentary, with our now internet-decades of hindsight, in brackets. I’ve also summarized the names mentioned (and alluded to) along 7 dimensions: Evocativity, Brevity, Greppability…
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Why I am switching to promises
I'm switching my node code from callbacks to promises. The reasons aren't merely aesthetical, they're rather practical:
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How many Commodore 64 computers were really sold? (2011)
Nobody doubts that the C64 was the greatest selling single computer model of all time, it even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records, but nobody quite knows how many it really was: Most sources say 17 million, others say 22 or even 30 million. With a high degree of confidence, I can now…
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How I Judge the Quality of Documentation
As a developer, you develop instincts for judging quality of code. One of my favorite interview questions is: When you look at a project’s code for the first time, what are the things you look for?...
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The Flying Nimbus – A high-power, self-balancing transportation contraption
What does a recycled (heavily used) go kart tire, an action-packed three-phase servo drive and a gyro/accelerometer have in common?
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Why talent agents for engineers don’t exist
People often ask me if I’m a talent agent for engineers, in the same way that actors have talent agents in Hollywood. In a lot of ways, the way I work is closer to a talent agent than a traditional recruiter — rather than sourcing for specific positions, I try to find smart people first, […]
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Sacrificial Architecture
Sometimes it's a good thing to be writing code that you expect to throw away in a couple of years time.
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Move Fast, Don't Break Your API
Amber on Rails
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Edit: A Relaxing Mix of Vi and Acme
Disclaimer: This software is not ready. I am using it and it is stable but I still have to make it feel great , if you have suggestions I would be glad to take them. I wrote a list of work that I will attempt in the future.
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Why Intel is adding instructions to speed up non-volatile memory
The latest version of the Intel manual has a couple of new instructions for non-volatile storage, like SSDs . What's that about?
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A Day of Communication at GitHub
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
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Hermitage: Testing the “I” in ACID
tl;dr: I have created a test suite for comparing the transaction isolation levels in different databases. I did this as background research for my book . This post explains why.
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Compiler Design in C
Compiler Design in C Download a copy! My book Compiler Design in C is now, unfortunately, out of print. You can download a complete copy, with the above button (pdf 19.1Mb OCR/Searchable—thanks to Marvin Hernández for adding the OCR). If you don’t want to print it out (the book is 984 pages long), you can…
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Why I Left the .NET Framework
The .NET Framework was good. Really good. Until it wasn’t. Why did I leave .NET? In short, it constrained our ability to choose (which is a huge deal for
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An upgrade to attoparsec, Haskell parsing library: more speed, more power
I’m pleased to introduce the third generation of my attoparsec parsing library. With a major change to its internals, it is both faster and more powerful than previous versions, while remaining backwards compatible. Comparing to C Let’s start with a speed comparison between the hand-written C code that powers…
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Unicorn Unix Magic Tricks
This post is based on the talk of the same name I gave at the Arrrrcamp conference in Ghent, Belgium on October 2nd, 2014. You can find the slides here and the video recording here .
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How Python 3 Should Have Worked (2012)
As a workaday Python developer, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the Python 2 to 3 transition isn’t working. I get occasional requests to make my libraries work in 3 but it’s far from clear how to and when I try to look it up I find all sorts of conflicting advice, none of which sounds very practical.