Best of 2017

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2017. 199 posts.

Tools & Productivity
63

A Tutorial on Portable Makefiles

In my first decade writing Makefiles, I developed the bad habit of liberally using GNU Make’s extensions. I didn’t know the line between GNU Make and the portable features guaranteed by POSIX. Usually it didn’t matter much, but it would become an annoyance when building on non-Linux systems, such as on the various…

69

Ableton Live Redesign

My redesign of the Ableton Live. The entire process and elaborate case study of UX and UI design including guerilla UX research, interviews, sketches, drafts, wireframes, iterations, interface ideas and everything in-between. UI design galore.

73

Switching from 1Password to Bitwarden

I've been using an OpenBSD laptop as my workstation a lot more lately, probably because most of my hardware just works now and I don't have to think too much about it. The touchpad works when I touch it, I can be confident that when I close the lid, the laptop will fully suspend and then fully resume again when I open…

81

Finding Free Food with Python

If you live in a major city, there’s a good chance you’ve used (or at least heard of) food delivery services like Postmates, GrubHub, or DoorDash. These services are great for times when I’m behind on groceries or when I’m getting some late night studying in before a big midterm or final. The only problem with these…