Top all-time · #893
Alan Skorkin
Personal blog · skorks.comprogrammingcareer
Alan Skorkin writes Skorks, a personal blog at skorks.com about programming and career. Since 2008, 73 different Hacker News readers have linked it 154 times, most often “The Difference Between A Developer, A Programmer And A Computer Scientist”. The last post was in 2013, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Skorks for practical programming posts on Bash shortcuts, Ruby internals, state machines, skip lists and the meaning of terms like developer and programmer.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Bash shortcuts post called a "good read"; Ruby case post "still interesting"; shortcuts list has "nice" shortcuts; beginner state-machine posts called "interest
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Alan Skorkin on building software, and the teams that build it, as AI changes both.
Most-linked posts?
- The Difference Between A Developer, A Programmer And A Computer Scientist6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2010-03-15
- Bash Shortcuts For Maximum Productivity5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-09-15
- How A Ruby Case Statement Works And What You Can Do With It4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-08-24
- Why Developers Never Use State Machines4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-09-01
- What Every Developer Should Know About URLs3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-05-03
- Software Development And The Sunk Cost Fallacy (or, Javascript)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-04-19
- Ruby Procs And Lambdas (And The Difference Between Them)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-05-27
- Why Developers Never Use State Machines (2011)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-01-13
- Does Software Development Have A Culture Of Rewarding Failure?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-09-13
- What Is a Startup (Or a Startup Idea)?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-11
What Hacker News says?
> they go to the same dusty corner where so many other CS > topics that are never used in practice lie already. https://www.skorks.com/2011/09/why-developers-never-use-stat...
Comment linking /2011/09/why-developers-never-use-state-machines/
on “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the State Machine”Submitted Why Developers Never Use State Machines as a story · 237 points
HN discussionAnother good read: Bash Shortcuts For Maximum Productivity [0] [0] http://www.skorks.com/2009/09/bash-shortcuts-for-maximum-pro...
Comment linking /2009/09/bash-shortcuts-for-maximum-productivity/
on “Advancing in the Bash Shell”Submitted Why Developers Never Use State Machines (2011) as a story · 183 points
HN discussionFantastic bit of research and write-up. SSRF is going to be the major story for the next couple years. I've seen them all over the place and they are much harder to block since they exploit multiple protocols and the properties of URLs have many arcane rules that aren't known to most programmers. Reading this a while back really opened my eyes to how complicated it was, even if I'd already learned (the hard way) mos…
Comment linking /2010/05/what-every-developer-should-know-about-urls/
on “Targeting HTTP's Hidden Attack-Surface”Submitted Bash Shortcuts For Maximum Productivity as a story · 181 points
HN discussionThe core problem is definitely the support of custom types. I agree, if you refuse custom types everything gets a lot simpler. Here's a very simple example of marshaling comparing Marshal dump and load in Ruby using YAML, vs. custom JSON marshalers: http://www.skorks.com/2010/04/serializing-and-deserializing-... Note that the post shows a tree structure in YAML because Marshall gives it to you for free (synonymous w…
Comment linking /2010/04/serializing-and-deserializing-objects-with-ruby/
on “XSLT is a failure wrapped in pain”Submitted Did your boss thank you for coding yourself to death? as a story · 139 points
HN discussionAn interesting application of skip lists: http://www.skorks.com/2010/03/faster-list-intersection-using... But I can't see why the same cannot be done using trees. :-/
Comment linking /2010/03/faster-list-intersection-using-skip-pointers/
on “What are the lesser known but cool data structures?”Submitted 99 Out Of 100 Programmers Can’t Program – I Call BS as a story · 132 points
HN discussion[Follow up read] Why developers never use state machine: http://www.skorks.com/2011/09/why-developers-never-use-state...
Comment linking /2011/09/why-developers-never-use-state-machines/
on “How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going”Submitted What Every Developer Should Know About URLs as a story · 123 points
HN discussion"What you fail to realize" <- ? First, I believe there is a cultural difference between Canada and the US. In Canada, a Master's degree is typically not a professional degree and you usually cannot buy a M.Sc. Typically, half of the credits come from courses and the other half (often even more) comes from your thesis. I don't know about the situation in the UK, the author's country of origin. Second, I TAed and taug…
Comment linking /2010/10/99-out-of-100-programmers-cant-program-i-call-bullshit/
on “Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery ”Submitted The Difference Between A Developer, A Programmer And A Computer Scientist as a story · 101 points
HN discussionThere's an older (but still interesting) post about case in Ruby here[1] and another here[2] with some extra insight into the MRI implementation. Having learned Ruby before most of the other stuff I play with these days, I always second-guess myself when using a switch/case construct in my code. [1] http://www.skorks.com/2009/08/how-a-ruby-case-statement-work... [2] http://www.daniellesucher.com/2013/07/ruby-case-ve…
Comment linking /2009/08/how-a-ruby-case-statement-works-and-what-you-can-do-with-it/
on “How I Made My Ruby Project 10x Faster”Submitted You Don't Need Math Skills To Be A Good Developer - What About A Great One as a story · 88 points
HN discussionVery similar list here: http://www.skorks.com/2009/09/bash-shortcuts-for-maximum-pro... which includes some other nice shortcuts - like ctrl + xx
Comment linking /2009/09/bash-shortcuts-for-maximum-productivity/
on “Shortcuts to Move Faster in Bash Command Line”Submitted The Greatest Developer Fallacy Or The Wisest Words You’ll Ever Hear? as a story · 79 points
HN discussionI have been looking for apps that teaches keyboard training geared towards computer programming, and this looks like a good start. Congratulations! Would be cool to have a few tests where you can train typical bash and vim commands and see the ideal finger placement. Extra credits for emulating things in e.g. bash like: ctrl+a and alt+u etc. For command shortcut inspiration see for example: http://www.skorks.com/200…
Comment linking /2009/09/bash-shortcuts-for-maximum-productivity/
on “Practice typing for Code”Submitted How To Become A Spammer Regardless Of People Following You On Twitter as a story · 67 points
HN discussionWhat's missing in the other comments is that you can't call private methods with an explicit receiver, for example my_object.private_meth or even self.private_meth . On the other hand, public and protected methods can be called on self . See this blog post for more info: http://www.skorks.com/2010/04/ruby-access-control-are-privat...
Comment linking /2010/04/ruby-access-control-are-private-and-protected-methods-only-a-guideline/
on “Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9”Submitted Algorithms, A Dropbox Challenge and Dynamic Programming as a story · 57 points
HN discussionThis article by Alan Skorkin tried to differentiate between the Computer Scientist (Engineer in your case?), the Programmer and the Developer: http://www.skorks.com/2010/03/the-difference-between-a-devel... I agree that there isn't a standardized definition.
Comment linking /2010/03/the-difference-between-a-developer-a-programmer-and-a-computer-scientist/
on “Ask HN: Programmers vs. Developers vs. Engineers”Submitted Closures – A Simple Explanation (Using Ruby) as a story · 54 points
HN discussionTwo interesting beginner posts: http://www.skorks.com/2011/09/why-developers-never-use-state... http://www.shopify.com/technology/3383012-why-developers-sho... And a more dense and complete beginner friendly article: http://ai-depot.com/FiniteStateMachines/
Comment linking /2011/09/why-developers-never-use-state-machines/
on “Ask HN: Friendly Introduction to State Machines?”Submitted The Myth of the Underachieving Genius as a story · 39 points
HN discussionSubmitted Write A Function To Determine If A Number Is A Power Of 2 as a story · 37 points
HN discussionSubmitted How People Can Get You To Do What They Want as a story · 32 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Secret Of Being A Great Mentor as a story · 24 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Best Way To Interview A Developer as a story · 20 points
HN discussion
