Top all-time · #201
Addy Osmani
Personal blog · addyosmani.com/blogprogrammingwebai
Addy Osmani writes AddyOsmani.com, a personal blog at addyosmani.com about programming, web and ai. Since 2010, 230 different Hacker News readers have linked it 362 times, most often “Design patterns explained in Javascript ”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 13 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Addy Osmani's blog and his free book on JavaScript design patterns as a practical starting point for learning JavaScript and front-end architecture. Commenters point to it for well-coded, well-written front-end material.
- Recommended for · 13 comments
- Commenters recommend his JavaScript design patterns book as the best starting point, call his front-end writing well-coded and well-written, and say his posts a
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Addy Osmani writes about agentic engineering, AI-assisted development, web performance, software quality, and engineering leadership.
Most-linked posts?
- Design patterns explained in Javascript 22 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2011-07-14
- Learning JavaScript Design Patterns – A Book by Addy Osmani9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2016-02-03
- Comprehension Debt – the hidden cost of AI generated code8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2026-03-15
- Learning JavaScript Design Patterns6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-03-02
- Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-09-04
- Loop Engineering: Designing loops that prompt coding agents5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-06-08
- The Next Two Years of Software Engineering5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-01-05
- Google Chrome at 17 – A history of our browser5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-09-03
- Emulate Vision Deficiencies in DevTools4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-09-29
- Large Scale JavaScript4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-08-27
What Hacker News says?
It doesn't have to be wild west but I don't disagree it usually turns into that. Before frameworks I spent a lot of cycles learning (usually the hard way) how to organize jQuery/JS code so it wasn't a total mess. I like to think I finally got it fairly maintainable for reasonable sized code bases. But by that time existing frameworks made a lot more sense so that's a bunch of thinking I'll never get back. I would gu…
Comment linking /resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/
on “How to manage HTML DOM with vanilla JavaScript only?”Submitted Essential JavaScript Design Patterns For Beginners as a story · 336 points
HN discussionThere was not such thing like ES3 module syntax. This is just programming pattern many people used: https://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/b... It was a great idea back then, but that was never syntax. This and similar patterns rely on the fact JavaScript is very dynamic and flexible language and enables creating closures and creating objects dynamically. These are very powerful features of langu…
Comment linking /resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/
on “Create React Apps with No Configuration”Submitted Tips I use to avoid burnout as a story · 221 points
HN discussionLearn a front-end MVC framework. JavaScript plays a huge roll in creating applications like Gmail or Grooveshark. Addy Osmani's blog is probably as good a jumping off point as any ( http://addyosmani.com/blog/ ).
Comment linking /blog/
on “An Advanced Guide to HTML and CSS”Submitted Visualize Data Structures in VSCode as a story · 178 points
HN discussionPerhaps it's just their preferred platform. If it weren't for the expense I'd probably prefer it over Windows at least. At any rate, the readme does link to this article[1] if macOS isn't your thang. [1] https://addyosmani.com/blog/image-optimization-tools/
Comment linking /blog/image-optimization-tools/
on “NirSoft Freeware (2008)”Submitted Design patterns explained in Javascript as a story · 175 points
HN discussionThis is the RevealingModulePattern that Crockford used to advocate back in the day, except assigning to an object that React creates instead of one you create.. http://javascript.crockford.com/private.html https://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/b... Be aware that memory usage can quickly balloon with this pattern, because the GC needs to keep alive anything referenced from inside the closure, inc…
Comment linking /resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/
on “React v15.5.0”Submitted Software Engineering: The Soft Parts as a story · 171 points
HN discussionSorry, they're the last thing to be done and there was a lot to document because of its API surface. Addy Osmani did a writeup a few weeks ago: http://addyosmani.com/blog/jquery-1-7s-callbacks-feature-dem...
Comment linking /blog/jquery-1-7s-callbacks-feature-demystified/
on “JQuery 1.7 Released”Submitted Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google as a story · 155 points
HN discussionI haven't actually used an NPM caching proxy myself. It looks like Artifactory does support acting as an NPM proxy. The other tools I've heard of are Sinopia, Verdaccio, and local-npm. Addy Osmani has a related article at https://addyosmani.com/blog/using-npm-offline/ .
Comment linking /blog/using-npm-offline/
on “Npm operational incident, 6 Jan 2018”Submitted A Few New Things Coming To JavaScript as a story · 153 points
HN discussionYou know he actually does have his own blog: https://addyosmani.com/blog/ As well as several blog like posts at google plus https://plus.google.com/+AddyOsmani There are numerous official google blogs like the chromium blog https://blog.chromium.org/ As to why he chose medium over his existing blogs only he can tell you. My guess would be that he is using Medium to reach a bigger audience. The confusing thing is whe…
Comment linking /blog/
on “JavaScript Start-up Performance”Submitted Native image lazy-loading for the web as a story · 115 points
HN discussionTry this: http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/bo...
Comment linking /resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/
on “Ask HN: How best to learn software design principles?”Submitted Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture as a story · 109 points
HN discussionSounds like you're looking for this: http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/bo...
Comment linking /resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/
on “Superhero.js: articles and videos on building large JavaScript apps”Submitted Essential JavaScript design patterns as a story · 101 points
HN discussionDont forget: http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/bo...
Comment linking /resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/
on “JavaScript: The Right Way”Submitted Custom Sublime Text Build Systems For Popular Tools And Languages as a story · 99 points
HN discussionThe term isn't very ubiquitous, but the problem it describes is. Some references — https://addyosmani.com/blog/rehydration/ https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/02/rendering-...
Comment linking /blog/rehydration/
on “LastPass Extension slows Chrome's responsiveness by up to 50%”Submitted Patterns For Large-Scale JavaScript Application Architecture as a story · 88 points
HN discussion'Eloquent Javascript' ( http://eloquentjavascript.net/ ) and 'Learning JavaScript Design Patterns' ( http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/bo... ) are the best resources so far.
Comment linking /resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/
on “Speaking JavaScript”Submitted Good code is like a love letter to the next developer who will maintain it as a story · 76 points
HN discussionNoticed addyo in the terminal during the video; here's a more descriptive explanation on the how and why from his blog: http://addyosmani.com/blog/improved-developer-tooling-and-ye...
Comment linking /blog/improved-developer-tooling-and-yeoman/
on “Yeoman.io - Quickly build beautiful web applications”Submitted Double-keyed caching: Browser cache partitioning as a story · 74 points
HN discussionAll of Addy Osmani's stuff is well-coded and/or well-written, I've been reading his front-end stuff for almost a decade now: https://addyosmani.com/blog/large-scale-jquery/
Comment linking /blog/large-scale-jquery/
on “Essential Image Optimization”Submitted Building Large-Scale jQuery Applications as a story · 72 points
HN discussion
