Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 300 posts.
I started my blog originally to help me get to the next level in my career and help establish myself as an authority in the areas of tech that I was focusing on. I liked writing and thought I had something to say. Looking back at my 6 years of blogging now it’s hard to recognise myself from the eng
Much code, very webdev. A blog by Samuel Faure about web development, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, and more.
Most of my career has been working on web services and mobile apps but at some point this got old for me—in high school I was part of a soldering club and I had this lingering feeling that I wanted to get into ‘harder’ problems. Two years ago I started looking around for companies in Amsterdam and came across…
Last Updated: January 24, 2026One of the most enlightening moments in my career was when I discovered a…
Achieving Data Freedom Through Open Source and Rust
Monitoring employees in the name of productivity or security can cause a lot more problems than it solves.
Why don’t tech companies pay engineers more to stay? The top companies for engineers are transparent and they pay attention to an engineer's salary. Ethena
I find that when I play RPG games, I often hoard single-use items like potions and scrolls, saving them for some future critical moment. I finish games like Skyrim with a backpack full of unspent resources, reserved for a crisis that never actually arrives. What’s the point, then, of all these items? Just like I save…
The Domino’s “Pizza Tracker” is an intriguing piece of UI. As an end user, it provides the precision of detail you want in tracking your order: Your order has…
a.k.a. Richard Hamming vs. Richard Feynman
Two years ago I was elected to the board of directors for the Python Software Foundation—the PSF. I recently returned from the annual PSF board retreat (this one was in …
I had a plumber over the other day. I was worried that my water service line might be leaking. There was a wet patch in the yard and I noticed that one of my sink’s water pressure seemed to be lowe…
And clear, readable code is probably the hardest code to write
I am switching away from SourceHut because it no longer fits my workflow.
The Washington Post writes The U.S. economy is booming. So why are tech companies laying off workers? This article has some good data, but I think misses the point with sub-heads like “Shine has co…
"Destroying silos" is a clumsy solution to team isolation
Building git for lawyers at Version Story (YC W21) — versionstory.com
Projects and thoughts from James Porter
Questions for when your interviewer says “Do you have any questions for me?”
Over the years, I've read a lot of books on software engineering. Agile books in particular like to refute the "Waterfall Model". Every t...
Cinder is part of a growing list of US-based tech companies that encounter engineering applicants who are actually suspected North Korean nationals. Here's what we're doing about it.
Names and emails (even Sumit’s) have been redacted to protect the innocent and the guilty. But you know who you are. Who is Sumit B? I...
Reflecting on my engineering career and what I could have done better.
Bad managers and CRE bagholders lost, competent employees and internet-savvy teams won ...arbitrary authoritarian control over your work-life is so 1900s
I am a Scala developer and speaker who was cancelled three years ago. Yesterday I attended the High Court in London to hear an apology from several prominent members of the Scala community for making untrue claims about me on 27 April 2021. I sued them for libel, and they admitted fault and settled, paying me costs…
