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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 744 posts.
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Brian Harvey: Why SICP matters
In 2011, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of MIT, the Boston Globe made a list of the most important innovations developed there. They asked me to explain the importance of SICP, and this is what I sent them:
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The software development final exam: Algorithms and Data Structures
If you would like me to grade your answers, please send an email to cperciva-exam-part1@tarsnap.com [EDIT: I have now finished marking part 1 answers; please do not send me any more] with your answers to the above questions along with the following two:
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I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
“So the site’s pretty simple, all it needs to do is X, Y and Z. You seem like a good programmer so I’m sure it will only take you a few days to put it toge
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Objectivist C
Although academic computer scientists have generally dismissed Objectivist-C, it has a zealous following among self-taught programmers and college sophomores.
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We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
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JQuery 1.8 Released
jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library
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Why Concatenative Programming Matters
Introduction There doesn’t seem to be a good tutorial out there for concatenative programming, so I figured I’d write one, inspired by t...
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About normalize.css: a modern, HTML5-ready alternative to CSS resets
A small CSS library to make browser defaults more consistent
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"If you want to order it, use 'view source' to find the commented-out link."
Xen virtual private server hosting for the technically adept. Since 2005. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD virtual machines
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Tell, don't ask
And now, a friendly message from your local Tell, don’t ask Department. ...
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Your Bash Prompt Needs This
Have you ever had this happen to you? You start a program and then interrupt it with Ctrl-C, and Bash prints its prompt after the ^C you have typed:
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A good developer has a natural, almost visceral aversion to complexity
Code should be simple. Code should be butt simple. Code should be so simple that there’s no way it can be misunderstood. Good code has no nooks. Good code has no crannies. Good code is a round room with no corners for bugs to hide in. We all know this. So why does most code suck? Because it’s written
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The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode
Ever wonder about that mysterious Content-Type tag? You know, the one you’re supposed to put in HTML and you never quite know what it should be? Did you ever get an email from your friends in…
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How do we read code?
I recently got to participate in a psychological experiment for programmers. A friend of mine, Mike Hansen, is doing research on how people comprehend programs.…
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John Resig: Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja Update
Jeff Atwood wrote up a post today on the merits of writing a technical book in this day-and-age and specifically called out my past post on programming book profits and my work-in-progress Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja .
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Why I Use Perl: Reliability
Perl 5 is a great language for new development because it and its ecosystem are amazingly reliable. Here's my case study.
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