Best of 2009

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2009. 403 posts.

Software Engineering
305

The Seven Stages of the Programmer

Before he takes the first step, the programmer does not know that programming exists. He is aware of computers, but has never considered how they actually work. He feels the process of making a video game is somewhat akin to making a film, or perhaps writing a book. If someone were to ask him how that actually works…

309

Clojure N00b Tips from Tim Bray

Clojure is the new hotness among people who think the JVM is an interesting platform for post-Java languages, and for people who think there’s still life in that ol’ Lisp beast, and for people who worry about concurrency and state in the context of the multicore future. Over the last few days I’ve been severely…

314

That's Only Ten Lines Of Code

I've gotten used to the snarky and cynical comments that people make on techcrunch and other tech blogs when there's a post about a startup that get's funded. It's a good thing that people debate and discuss these investments. Clearly not every venture investment that is made is a good one. In fact I've written […]

330

Idiomatic Clojure

I’m starting to wind down my Clojure research, but I’m feeling a little guilty about having exposed people to my klunky Lisp-newbie code, perhaps giving a false impression of how the language feels. So I’d like to show you what it looks like when it’s created by someone who’s actually part of the tribe and thinks in…