Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 36 posts.
Great Hackers (2004)
July 2004 (This essay is derived from a talk at Oscon 2004.) A few months ago I finished a new book , and in reviews I keep noticing words like "provocative'' and "controversial.'' To say nothing of "idiotic.'' I didn't mean to make the book controversial. I was trying to make it efficient. I didn't want to waste…
How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting
How I got started consulting and the advice which changed my (business) life.
Does one have to be a genius to do maths?
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly. (José Ortega y Gasset, “Notes on t…
Agile: 5 years later and you're still doing it wrong
Which values of the Agile Manifesto do you find foolish? If you're going to tar and feather it(Agile), maybe you should start at the source.
John Resig: Redefining the Introduction to Computer Science at Khan Academy
I’m incredibly excited to take this opportunity to announce a new project that I’ve been leading here at Khan Academy: Khan Academy Computer Science .
A Word to the Resourceful
January 2012 A year ago I noticed a pattern in the least successful startups we'd funded: they all seemed hard to talk to. It felt as if there was some kind of wall between us. I could never quite tell if they understood what I was saying. This caught my attention because earlier we'd noticed a pattern among the most…
Right versus pragmatic
At a previous job, the shared men’s bathroom for the floor was laid out like this:
Whose bug is this anyway?
Some bugs look so impossible you start blaming the OS, the tools, or the compiler. This post digs into three of them.
Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong
This is my talk from 2012 Startup School, pretty much exactly as delivered. It's been more than 7 years since we started YC. In that time, we've funded 467 startups so I've seen a lot of patterns....
No I won't sign your NDA, here's why.
The other day I got to chatting with a lovely woman who reached out after reading my blog. She was interested in talking about an idea she had, how she might get it off the ground, and if I might …
Suffering-oriented programming
Someone asked me an interesting question the other day: "How did you justify taking such a hu...
You're solving the wrong problem
Problem-solving is an important part of everyday life, from organizing your video library to deciding whether to buy a car. Small problems (like trying to
Lean into the pain
When you first begin to exercise, it’s somewhat painful. Not wildly painful, like touching a hot stove, but enough that if your only goal was to avoid pain, you certainly would stop doing it. But if you keep exercising… well, it just keeps getting more painful. When you’re done, if you’ve really pushed yourself, you…
Don't fall in love with your technology
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
You can do it alone
I’m Ryan Carson, and I’ve been a Founder CEO for 20 years, building, scaling and selling three companies.
What I Learned From Increasing My Prices
Last month Bidsketch had the biggest increase in revenue it’s ever had. Before that, the biggest increase in revenue came when FreshBooks emailed a million people and mentioned Bidsketch as a new integration for sales proposals. I got so many new sales notifications that day, I thought someone had hacked my server. It…