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Life, Learning & Writing

The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,743 posts.

Any year
4803

The Maddest My Code Made Anyone

I was lucky enough to grow up through the early 2000’s, during the golden age of Half-Life mods. Industry classics like Counter-Strike (CS) had just been invented, every month brought new mods to try, and files were too big to download on a dial-up connection so you’d leech them off a server at a big local LAN party…

4806

Hundred Year Mistakes

My manager and I got off on a tangent in our most recent one-on-one on the subject of the durability of design mistakes in programming languages. A particular favourite of mine is the worst of the …

4811

Why don't I have a blog?

I feel like I should have a blog. Specifically, a tech blog. Everything points towards it! I like coding, I like reading, I particularly like reading blog posts . So then, why don't I have one?!

4812

Just Write

I listened to a podcast about Lena Dunham. I knew nothing about her, had never seen any of her work, and probably never will. But the episode ended with thes...

4814

Using computers more freely and safely

The most important step is the first one. Humanity didn't get good at building houses by building the same house a million times. We built lots of different houses and learned from each other's failures. Gravitating away from monopolies is a way everyone can help improve software, regardless of our abilities or needs.

4823

Book Review: The Programmer's Brain

There are some books which make you feel smarter just by having them on your shelf. This is one of them! I would consider it essential for anyone working with code - whether a wide-eyed newbie or grizzled veteran. How do human brains understand code? What neurological quirks do we all have? Which common mistakes can…

4824

Experts often end up where they started as beginners

Experts often end up where they started as beginners. If you've never seen the word valet, you might pronounce it like VAL-it. If you realize the word has a French origin, you would pronounce it val-A. But the preferred pronunciation is actually VAL-it. Beginning musicians play by ear, to the extent that they can play