Topics /
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 285 posts.
In the early years of this blog I wrote a lot about the personal struggles of people who had attained financial independence only to find out that it revealed that money was not what was standing in the way of happiness. That's contrary to the message of our society, which is this:Until you're rich, you're…
What happens when you ignore the math
… and post a write-up on this blog. That sounds crazy of course – who has the time to read a paper every weekday? Let alone write it up! I’ve done it for each of the last two calendar y…
What if you’re not a superstar programmer? What if other people work longer than you, or harder than you, or have built better projects than you? Can you succeed without self-confidence? I believe you can, and moreover I feel that lack of confidence can actually make you a better programmer.
Michael Gove, the UK’s Secretary of State for Education, has expressed a wish to see almost all school pupils studying mathematics in one form or another up to the age of 18. An obvious quest…
My first design job was an internship on Microsoft OneNote in 2007. Our intrepid leader was the product founder Chris Pratley, who…
Epistemic status: exhortatory and personal, but pretty confidently my true belief CW: suicide mention When I was a teenager, I was depressed. And the way I thought mental illness worked, the way I…
Last.fm is a web site that tracks your music listening history across devices (computer, phone, iPod, etc) and services (Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, etc). I’ve been using Last.fm for nearly 10 years now, and my tracked listening history goes back even further when you consider all my pre-existing iTunes play counts…
The story of a new programming language
The story of how programming has made me a better person than I was.
Let's pause and discuss this for a minute.
The Revolution Will Not Take Place in a Classroom
Today is my five hundredth day of using the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition exclusively as my mobile phone. This is a nice piece of hardware (go...
A reflection on the software industry, on the place it leaves for non-passionate programmers, and the consequences
Beware the to-do list rabbit hole. It starts off with one or two innocent reminders and ends up with you tumbling down a long hole of procrastination in search of the perfect system. After many years of trying different software I’m glad to say that I’m finally climbing back out of the hole wearing a rather dashing…
The privileges of the self-employed, inspiring, brave, courageous entrepreneurial class that pursues their passion.
