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Tech Industry & Business

The most popular blog posts about tech industry & business on Hacker News. 522 posts.

2026
486

Ratchets in software development (2021)

So there's a thing we use at work which I call a ratchet. In our codebase, there are "patterns" which we used to use all the time, but we decided to stop using them, but removing all of the existing instances at once is too much work. We want to remove all of these instances eve...

488

The truth about being a manager

I vividly remember most of my own journey into engineering management over the years. Throughout my career, I’ve also mentored several people taking the step from engineer to engineering manager. It’s a challenging and often lonely journey, and here are a few truths most new managers realize the hard way. (If you…

490

The AI Demand Bubble

If you liked this piece, you should subscribe to my premium newsletter. It's $70 a year, $18 a quarter, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter that’s usually anywhere from 10,000 to 18,000 words, including vast, detailed analyses of NVIDIA, Anthropic

492

The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it

A bespoke software revolution? I don't buy it. It'll exist. It already exists. Small consultants and big consulting firms have made custom software for years. It almost always sucks. It’s bloated, confusing, and because the client pays, it’s built in all the wrong ways. Who’s excited about bespoke software? Software…

502

The AI Marketing BS Index

You may already be aware of John Baez’s “Crackpot Index” , which provides a simple tongue-in-cheek scoring system for assessing whether a research contribution to physics is likely “revolutionary.” The list contain such gems as “40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is…

510

Open Source as We Know It Is Dead

I've been part of open source for most of my life. This year, the projects I love started closing their doors to outside contributors, and I don't blame them one bit, but it makes me sad. A personal look at how AI is changing open source as I've known it.