3931
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,748 posts.
3932
3933
Great Hacker != Great Hire (2004)
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paul Graham's recent essay Great Hackers . His sermon is well-written, and I assume it played very well when he preached it to the choir at OSCON .
3934
All the remedial classes in one place
A look at the “serious” courses in college today. By Professor Doom I’ve seen plenty of articles bemoaning ridiculous col...
3935
3936
Business Requirements are Bullshit
How do you go about gathering business requirements, so you know what to deliver to the customer?
3937
Types of Engineers
A plethora of books, articles, and research papers have been written about software engineering quality measurement. Over the course of the last half-century, different methods of measurement have been developed, adopted, abused, and discarded for newer methods that aim to solve the problems of the previous methods.
3938
Top Surprises When Starting Out as a Software Developer
Even though more than 20 years have passed, I still remember wondering what it would be like to finish university and start working. Up until that point, I had pretty much spent my whole life in sc…
3939
How to charge clients: flat fee vs. hourly rate?
credit Having been back in the freelance world for a while now, I once again have to deal with quoting my clients an hourly rate for long-term contract work on an ongoing basis. I've been able to...
3940
From engineer to manager: A practical guide to your first months in leadership
A practical and thoughtful guide for new engineering managers. Learn how to build agreements, avoid micromanagement, run effective 1:1s, and navigate your first months with clarity.
3941
Criminal Overengineering
A vast proportion of software at work today is horribly over-engineered for its task. And I’m not talking about the interfaces, about having too many controls or options for the users. These …
3942
Now that you have turned 22 can I please give you some advice...
I come across a lot of advice daily, but there was one piece of advice that stuck out to me recently. This is what not to do in life.
3943
Assistant to the Regional Manager
The problem with utopia
3944
Interview like an asset, not a beggar
You're not asking for a job, you're selling a service. The true question behind every interview is "How can you help us?"
3945
3946
“Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects
A Flawed Axiom Write every day. If you’ve ever considered professional writing, you’ve heard this advice. Stephen King recommends it in his instructional memoir, On ... Read more
3947
The Risks of Staying Put
Friends! Pals! Treasured work associates! Last month Mandy Brown wrote about how she struggled to quit her job and this bit hit me like a sledgehammer: “I...
3948
3949
3950
Strategy and criteria decision matrix: A framework for decision making
I attended a talk by Evan Moore a while ago, where he described a framework the early team at Doordash used to make decisions and prioritize growth strategies. I was impressed by the systematic way of listing strategies and assigning them weights based on possible impact + predicted effort it would take to execute…
3951
3952
Coding Like a Girl
(this was originally given as a talk at AlterConf in Oakland)
3953
New junior developers can’t code
Something’s been bugging me about how new devs learn and I need to talk about it. We’re at this weird inflection point in software development. Every junior dev I talk to has Copilot or Claude or GPT running 24/7. They’re shipping code faster than ever. But when I dig deeper into their understanding of what they’re…
3954
I don't know if my job will still exist in ten years
In 2021, being a good software engineer felt great. The world was full of software, with more companies arriving every year who needed to employ engineers to…
3955
3956
Best Practices – Why I Hate Them
I hate the expression “best practice”, it’s so, so often used by someone to justify the application of cargo cult without actually understanding why.
3957
My takeaways from DjangoCon EU 2025
Here are some of the most interesting things I learned at DjangoCon EU 2025 in Dublin, Ireland, partially written with the help of AI: link to talks
3958
What’s the point of tech conferences?
It’s con season in the tech world. Yesterday evening I flew from Pluralsight’s Link/ unconference in New Orleans to Pycon US in Salt Lake City. New Orleanians are just as likely as not …
3959
You can't git clone a team
Mastering the full stack isn’t just a technical feat: it’s a human challenge, and no, you can’t git clone your way out of it.
3960
“Technical” Skills
If you've ever said "soft skills" and felt weird about it, this essay is for you