Top all-time · #956
8th Light
Company blog · 8thlight.com/blogprogrammingcareer
8th Light is the company blog at 8thlight.com, writing about programming and career. Since 2012, 71 different Hacker News readers have linked it 95 times, most often “The Clean Architecture (2012)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 30 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link 8th Light's blog for posts on software craftsmanship, Clean Architecture, REST hypermedia and Clojure and Erlang internals. Many comments point to its apprenticeship and job pages.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 30 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Agentic products built on twenty years of platform engineering. We help ambitious teams take AI from prototype to production. Custom software since 2006.
Most-linked posts?
- The Clean Architecture (2012)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-12-17
- The True Cost of Rewrites3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-11-27
- /apprenticeship/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-12-04
- /blog/kofi-gumbs/2017/05/02/core-erlang.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-04-15
- /apprenticeship3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-01-31
- Values Are the Rules You Break3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-09-16
- Essential and relevant: a unit test balancing act2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-08-19
- /blog/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-08-18
- Everybody OOMs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-17
- The Why: A Better Git Commit Message2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-10-31
What Hacker News says?
Relevant blog post in defense of generalists: "Jack of all trades, Master of One" https://8thlight.com/blog/makis-otman/2018/10/30/master-of-o...
Comment linking /blog/makis-otman/2018/10/30/master-of-one.html
on “Things I Don’t Know as of 2018”Submitted The True Cost of Rewrites as a story · 212 points
HN discussionI think this is a good example of Spec being used to guide the solution http://gigasquidsoftware.com/blog/2016/05/29/one-fish-spec-f... I don't think Spec alone removes the need for mocking, using Clean Architecture is probably more important for that https://8thlight.com/blog/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean-arc... If you structure your app so that any IO lives at the edges, it becomes possible to test all your busin…
Comment linking /blog/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean-architecture.html
on “Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]”Submitted Exploring Error Handling Patterns in Go as a story · 133 points
HN discussionWould these be cases where Robert Martin's 'The Clean Architecture' [1] would help, where the core enterprise logic is separated from third party dependencies, making the latter easy to swap out and replace? I'd imagine a number of these cases are caused by a heavy reliance on third party technologies that are no longer supported, or very few people still understand. [1] https://8thlight.com/blog/uncle-bob/2012/08/1…
Comment linking /blog/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean-architecture.html
on “Ask HN: Have you ever worked on a product that was killed by technical debt?”Submitted The Clean Architecture (2012) as a story · 82 points
HN discussionI'm one of those who think the JVM is a big plus instead of a big minus. For example, here is a post how you can easily deep dive into the internals of the JVM to figure out a problem: https://8thlight.com/blog/colin-jones/2017/03/17/everybody-o... I wanna see this kind of tooling for other languages. The JVM gives you amazing tools that are already there for you even if you're not an expert.
Comment linking /blog/colin-jones/2017/03/17/everybody-ooms.html
on “Fourteen Months with Clojure”Submitted Values Are the Rules You Break as a story · 17 points
HN discussionbtw the agile manifesto (and similars) has such "we value X over Y" phrases. Another thing; as this one says, the values are the rules (well, should be). Breaking (intentionaly) them is a compromise needed sometimes. While not following, is different matter.. https://8thlight.com/blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-r...
Comment linking /blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-rules-break.html
on “What are your company's anti-values?”Submitted Clojure Is Boring as a story · 9 points
HN discussion> Surprising this has been written in 2017. It looks like java written a decade ago. Clean Architecture™ has been around for a while now; I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than a decade already. This post is a guide to an existing concept, not a presentation of something new. EDIT: This is Uncle Bob, 5 years ago: https://8thlight.com/blog/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean-arc... . So maybe it's just 5 years old -…
Comment linking /blog/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean-architecture.html
on “Better Software Design with Clean Architecture”Submitted Designing for Pipeline Transformations as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI know that there's some cross-over in the Python/Scientific community with http://software-carpentry.org/ - which is interesting. I also know that in Chicago 'apprenticeship' is a word that is thrown out there a lot. http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship https://engineering.groupon.com/2012/software-apprenticeship... https://www.devmynd.com/jobs/apprenticeship
Comment linking /apprenticeship
on “A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job”Submitted Types of Types in Elm as a story · 6 points
HN discussion1. To understand Clojure stacktraces you should read https://8thlight.com/blog/connor-mendenhall/2014/09/12/cloju... . Although I agree the lengthy huge Java dump when crashing is pretty awful, you can ignore most of it. 3. I would recommend you look into Parinfer - https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/ . You can manage scopes with levels of indentation, rather than having to move parens around. It works with most…
Comment linking /blog/connor-mendenhall/2014/09/12/clojure-stacktraces.html
on “State of Clojure 2016 – Results and Analysis”Submitted The Why: A Better Git Commit Message as a story · 6 points
HN discussionhttps://medium.com/@fxn/how-does-elixir-compile-execute-code... Elixir creates an AST which is transformed into Erlang Abstract Format ( http://erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/absform.html ) which is then compiled into Erlang bytecode by Erlang compiler. Erlang VM's bytecode is largely undocumented (except for third-party attempts like http://erlangonxen.org/more/beam and http://beam-wisdoms.clau.se/en/latest/ ). So all la…
Comment linking /blog/kofi-gumbs/2017/05/02/core-erlang.html
on “What Erlang Taught Me About Distributed Systems”Submitted In Slack, no one can hear your scream as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSome background about Core Erlang: https://8thlight.com/blog/kofi-gumbs/2017/05/02/core-erlang.... Core Erlang is an intermediary language targeting 'BEAM', the Erlang virtual machine.
Comment linking /blog/kofi-gumbs/2017/05/02/core-erlang.html
on “Core Erlang by Example”Submitted Wolf and Rabbit as a story · 4 points
HN discussion8th Light (Chicago, IL) - Apprenticeships in Software Craftsmanship and User Experience Craftsmanship As an apprentice, you'll spend half your time working on internal projects for 8th Light. The rest of your time will be spent learning. You’ll work with a dedicated mentor who'll provide daily lessons and reading assignments to help guide you along. Apprentices in software development will learn about: Test Driven D…
Comment linking /apprenticeship
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2013)”Submitted Wear Your Uniform as a story · 4 points
HN discussion8th Light is a software company that's been explicitly practicing apprenticeship for like 12 years https://8thlight.com/blog/ryan-verner/2019/01/15/evolution-o...
Comment linking /blog/ryan-verner/2019/01/15/evolution-of-apprenticeship.html
on “A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life”Submitted Alternatives to Boolean Parameters as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYes, Robert "uncle bob" Martin is a fan https://8thlight.com/apprenticeship/
Comment linking /apprenticeship/
on “Learn to Code, It's Harder Than You Think”Submitted Dare to Be Good Enough—You'll be Happier for it as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWorth reading "The Hypermedia Maturity Model" afterwards https://8thlight.com/blog/jason-desrosiers/2018/05/30/the-hy...
Comment linking /blog/jason-desrosiers/2018/05/30/the-hypermedia-maturity-model.html
on “Roy Fielding's Misappropriated REST Dissertation”Submitted The True Cost of Rewrites as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWait, since when TDD become a best practice? I know this author is advocating it, but has 0 (zero) solid data or evidence to back this assertion. He is just trying to sell another religion. What I have noticed, TDD is being pedled heavy by RoR contracting shops that just care about billable hours and not vested if the startup or company is going to make it on the long run. I see often that it is the usually youngish…
Comment linking /our-team/robert-martin
on “The Start-Up Trap”Submitted How to Grow a User Group, the Remix as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
