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How to grow into your best developer self
Getting started the right way as a developer is tough, soI wrote you a letter I’d love to have received some ten years ago. Here's myfive minute how-to
Topics /
Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,935 posts.
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A $5000 Chair
This the story of a black faux-leather chair, the kind you can buy at Walmart for $99, that ended up costing me five grand. Very early in the days of Distil, my partner Steve and I hooked up with t…
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My Friend Bob Cringely
Bob Cringely died on Oct 3, 2026
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How to Teach a Child to Argue
Figaro rips the innards out of things people say and reveals the rhetorical tricks and pratfalls. For terms and definitions, click here . (What are figures of speech?) Ask Figaro a question!
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Useful Spy Books
Reading a good book is a great joy. And recommending a good book is almost as enjoyable. I’ve long been fascinated by books on espionage, and this contributed in no small part to me eventually joining the Dutch intelligence world, and later, rejoining it in some fashion. If you have favorite books that should be on…
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Ratfactor's illustrated guide to folding fitted sheets
Note to the impatient: You can just scroll down to the drawings of fitted sheets being folded. You won’t hurt my feelings. (I’ll never even know.) But you may want to bookmark this page for later instead. You can get fast at folding fitted sheets. But to learn how to fold fitted sheets is going to take some patience…
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Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction
Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) is a condition in which sexual function does not return to normal after the use of SSRIs and related antidepressants.
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Cruel optimism and lazy pessimism
Do you remember the avocado toast guy? I read Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus recently (you should read it, it’s great), and I learned that someone1 has come up with a name for this sort of modern reinterpretation of “let them eat cake”: cruel optimism. Cruel optimism, the way Hari interprets it2, boils down to the folly…
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Stop saying "just" (2019)
Do you work in Software Engineering, and have you seen messages or sentences like these before?
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Exercise increases number of immune cells in cancer patients
Two new Finnish studies show that short bouts of light or moderate exercise can increase the number of immune cells in the bloodstream of cancer patients.
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Call yourself titles
We constantly question ourselves when attempting anything new for the first time, which is daunting. And what’s worse, it prevents us from doing anything new, so we can’t change who we are. If you’ve always been terrible at sports and want to start working out, the natural reaction after a few attempts is to stop and…
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Writing for Half-Life
(File dated November 9, 1998) PREFACE: Another file from the same disk with the Nihilanth sketches, this one, if it is to believed, written the day after we shipped Half-Life. I do believe it because the file’s creation date is indeed November 9, 1998, and I am not l33t enough to know how to fake […]
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I wish I'd self-published sooner
It took until this year to write my first eBook and now it generates revenue while I sleep. What's holding you back? Learn from my experience so far.
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You Don’t Need Permission
I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Suresh, an ex-student I’ve known for a long time. A U.S. citizen he was now the head of sales and marketing for a company in London selling medical devices t…
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A History of the Silmarils in the Fifth Age
[Spoiler warning for The Silmarillion] I. The Silmarillion describes the fate of the three Silmarils. Earendil kept one, and traveled with it through the sky, where it became the planet Venus. Maed…
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Tips for Self-Learning Programming
Jorge Silva's personal blog on programming and software engineering
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Post-Mortem for Bra Theory
Bluehost - Top rated web hosting provider - Free 1 click installs For blogs, shopping carts, and more. Get a free domain name, real NON-outsourced 24/7 support, and superior speed. web hosting provider php hosting cheap web hosting, Web hosting, domain names, front page hosting, email hosting. We offer affordable…
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Toast
Toast was my first published short story collection. It's now effectively out of print — there was going to be a limited, signed, "final" edition, but I haven't seen hide nor hair of it for a year or two now — so I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons license.
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Interview with Mr. Money Mustache
Pete Adeney, more commonly known as Mr. Money Mustache [https://twitter.com/mrmoneymustache], retired at 30 after working as a software engineer for about ten years. He blogs at MrMoneyMustache.com [http://MrMoneyMustache.com] about how he saved money, where he invested it, and how he achieved “financial freedom…