Best of 2010

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2010. 134 posts.

Tools & Productivity
65

Mensch -- A coding font

The latest MacOS release (10.6, or “Snow Leopard”) comes with a new monospace font. It’s called “Menlo” and it’s a slightly modified form of the standard Linux font (with appropriately weightly Linux name) “DejaVu Sans Serif Mono”, which is itself an updated form of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. Apple’s modifications are…

67

My Common Git Workflow

A recent post [http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/still-hatin-on-git-now-with-added-actual-reasons/] that was highly ranked on Hacker News complained about common git workflows causing him serious pain. While I won't get into the merit of his user experience complaints, I do

86

In praise of git’s index

I still run into people lambasting Git for the concept of the index from time to time. It seems strange and superfluous to users of other VCS s – like a speed bump that serves no purpose. Why not just commit the changes in the working copy? This perception is understandable; when I first heard of Git, back as a…

87

Changing Passwords

How often should you change your password? I get asked that question a lot, usually by people annoyed at their employer’s or bank’s password expiration policy: people who finally memorized their current password and are realizing they’ll have to write down their new password. How could that possibly be more secure…