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A billion monkeys can't be wrong
Personal blog · gigamonkeys.wordpress.comprogrammingcareer
A billion monkeys can't be wrong is a personal blog at gigamonkeys.wordpress.com about programming and career. Since 2010, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Unit testing in Coders at Work (2009)”. The last post was in 2011, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Peter Seibel's blog for essays on programming debates and history, including the Netscape rewrite and C++ hype, and the unit testing and TDD piece drawn from Coders at Work.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Unit testing in Coders at Work (2009)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2011-03-09
- End of the line for Code Quarterly4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-10-17
- C++ in Coders at Work3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-02-15
- A tale of two rewrites (2009)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-10-09
- Unit Testing in Coders at Work3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-08-23
- C++ in Coders at Work (2009)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-08-08
- /2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-rewrites/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-05
What Hacker News says?
While Ken Thompson never used the word attack, he certainly didn't have a positive opinion of the language or of Bjarne Stroustrup either in terms of his technical contributions or his handling of C++ adoption: https://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/coders-c-plus-p...
Comment linking /2009/10/16/coders-c-plus-plus/
on “gh-116167: Allow disabling the GIL”Submitted C++ in Coders at Work as a story · 178 points
HN discussionDon't miss this cool insider look on Netscape's second system failure from jwz and Brendan Eich: http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-re...
Comment linking /2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-rewrites/
on “OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell”Submitted One woman can’t have a baby in nine months (2007) as a story · 86 points
HN discussionHere is my brief review of the articles as a whole. As a little background, I've been writing Lisp professionally for a while at many companies, both start ups and top-tier tech companies. I like writing about Lisp[1], and have been so far as to write blog posts ranging from why parentheses are a good thing to what kinds of data types Common Lisp has. I think there is still a place for writing about Lisp, but I don'…
Comment linking /2011/10/17/end-of-the-line-for-code-quarterly/
on “(λove (print (eval (read))))”Submitted End of the line for Code Quarterly as a story · 56 points
HN discussionhttp://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/coders-unit-test...
Comment linking /2009/10/05/coders-unit-testing/
on “Life at a startup”Submitted Software estimation considered harmful? (2011) as a story · 48 points
HN discussionThe interviews are thought-provoking, particularly the ones with Peter Norvig and Joe Armstrong. Seibel expands on some recurring themes on his blog ( http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/category/books/coders-at-wo... ). My wife also liked _Coders at Work_, though she has a lot of experience doing interviews for documentaries, and there were a couple times she was frustrated about comments Seibel should have pursued fu…
Comment linking /category/books/coders-at-work/
on “Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?”Submitted A tale of two rewrites (2009) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere isn't. jwz mentions that he was unsuccessful lobbying the release of the 3.0 source.[1] For the purposes of this discussion (since you only ask about the browser here), according to Brendan, 4 was like 3.[2] Seibel mentions there that Brendan says he tried to get it released, too. The big rewrite that everybody talks about is Gecko (under the stewardship of Gessner, I think), when 5 got ditched and the next re…
Comment linking /2010/03/07/two-rewrites-redux/
on “Mozilla Openness facts”Submitted Unit Testing in Coders at Work as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPlenty validation can be found in whole communities - anything concerning Ruby for example lives and breathes test or behavior driven development. Btw, Peter Norvig himself has good things to say on TDD[1]. So using him in an argument against TDD whilst he's using tests is kinda self defeating. 1. http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/coders-unit-test...
Comment linking /2009/10/05/coders-unit-testing/
on “How to become a proficient Python programmer”Submitted C++ in Coders at Work (2009) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe linked author claims that TDD is not a good approach to develop algorithms by linking to an article by Peter Norvig in which he writes tests to develop and further prove correctness of his algorithm. Maybe he didn't write the tests first, but none the less it proves the upmost importance of tests. Btw, Peter Norvig himself has good things to say on TDD[1]. So using him in an argument against TDD whilst he's usin…
Comment linking /2009/10/05/coders-unit-testing/
on “How to become a proficient Python programmer”Submitted Unit testing in Coders at Work (2009) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou may be interested to know Seibel gave a non-zero amount of thought to the issue of women in "Coders at Work": http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/women-coders/
Comment linking /2009/09/22/women-coders/
on “Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech”Submitted End of the line for Code Quarterly as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOk, I know this post is a couple days by now, but if you want to read more the eternal debate that is the C++ programming language, check out this article: http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/coders-c-plus-pl... There's actually 2 Hacker News posts already linking to this article, so you can read the comments are posted there as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=885482 http://news.ycombinator.com/ite…
Comment linking /2009/10/16/coders-c-plus-plus/
on “Google C++ Style Guide”Submitted Unit Testing in Coders at Work (2009) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionJWZ told a similar story about Netscape between versions 3 and 4 being rewritten in C++. The full story is in the book Coders at Work, but part of it appears here: https://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-r... Of course this was mid-90s when both the language and especially the compilers were quite different from now (and the compilers very buggy indeed).
Comment linking /2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-rewrites/
on “C++: Is It Really a Cruel Joke? (2003)”Submitted Do you still remember Code Quarterly? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionPlease do not assume I'm unfamiliar with TDD because I disagree with you. It diminishes your argument. Here you'll find references from big names (Peter Norvig, Joshua Bloch) discussing limitations of TDD as a design process: http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/coders-unit-test... (read it, it's more balanced than you'd think). Here are some interesting comments from the above: - Bloch: tests are inadequate…
Comment linking /2009/10/05/coders-unit-testing/
on “My Swift Dilemma”I'm having a hard time reconciling "[C++] never needed hype" with the quotes from Ken Thompson in http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/coders-c-plus-pl... .
Comment linking /2009/10/16/coders-c-plus-plus/
on “Why C++ is back”In Udo's defense, this article did cause a stir. That does make it seem like "ancient" history... Peter Seibel tried to "unpack some of the context," it's probably a good place to start for anyone who's interested: http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-re...
Comment linking /2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-rewrites/
on “The Duct Tape Programmer”Netscape was written in C, and almost died during the effort to port it to C++ on Netscape 4.0. https://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-r... Java semantics were inspired by the folks at Sun using Smalltalk, SELF, OpenSTEP and Objective-C. The C++ like syntax was to make it more attractive for adoption. https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html https://www.strongtalk.org/
Comment linking /2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-rewrites/
on “Ask HN: What’s bad about C++? I kinda like it”Peter Seibel's original post is worth reading in its entirety. It's a decently balanced piece. It leaves room for various views, and its summation seems about right. https://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/coders-unit-tes...
Comment linking /2009/10/05/coders-unit-testing/
on “Learning from Sudoku Solvers (2007)”
