Top all-time · #16021
Matthew Sinclair
Personal blog · matthewsinclair.com/blog · on HN as matthewsinclairaiwritingcareer
Matthew Sinclair's personal blog at matthewsinclair.com covers ai, writing and career. Since 2021, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 30 times, most often “Why Elixir? Common misconceptions”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Why Elixir? Common misconceptions3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-07-08
What Hacker News says?
I think this article is pretty spot on — it articulates something I’ve come to appreciate about LLM-assisted coding over the past few months. I started out very sceptical. When Claude Code landed, I got completely seduced — borderline addicted, slot machine-style — by what initially felt like a superpower. Then I actually read the code. It was shockingly bad. I swung back hard to my earlier scepticism, probably even…
Comment linking /blog/0178-why-llm-powered-programming-is-more-mech-suit-than-artificial-human
on “My AI skeptic friends are all nuts”Submitted LLM-powered tools amplify developer capabilities rather than replacing them as a story · 345 points
HN discussionThanks for the thoughtful reply. I will check that out. In between you doing that and me thinking on it overnight, I ended up writing up my thoughts as a blog post [0], which I have submitted here to HN as well [1]. [0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620407
Comment linking /blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-advertising
on “What if we made advertising illegal?”Submitted Why Elixir? Common misconceptions as a story · 258 points
HN discussionI find the “remote vs onsite” debate to be a little bit misguided. I try to reframe it as a balancing act between “broad work” and “deep work”. The difference being that broad work is the kind of thing that needs collaboration and interaction and deep work needs focus and singular attention. As an engineering leader, I have had some success and traction with non-engineers by re-framing the debate in this way. I wrot…
Comment linking /blog/0165-broad-work-vs-deep-work
on “Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week”Submitted What if we taxed advertising? as a story · 101 points
HN discussionI've often wondered what would happen if we _taxed_ advertising [0]. The same rationale applies: it'll never work, and it'll never even be tested, but I agree, it was fun to think about. [0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...
Comment linking /blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-advertising
on “Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear After 5 Seconds”Submitted Why Elixir? A Rebuttal to Common Misconceptions as a story · 13 points
HN discussionPersonal site: https://matthewsinclair.com A couple of other sites that I maintain for side projects: https://quantumfaxmachine.com https://whatnext.dev https://playprolix.com And my "own-my-own-stack" personal CMS that I use to host all of my sites: https://laksa.io
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?”Submitted Kids and smartphones – The real threat isn't screen time. It's algorithm time as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI agree [0]. Well, taxed rather than banned. But we’re in the same postcode. [0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...
Comment linking /blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-advertising
on “The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling”Submitted Using Socratic Dialog with AI for Better Technical Decisions as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI know this is controversial, and imperfect, but the longer this crap continues the more right I feel about this as a solution: What if we taxed advertising? https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...
Comment linking /blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-advertising
on “Google officially announces that ads will be included in AI Mode search results”Submitted Why Elixir? A Rebuttal to Common Misconceptions as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI agree! “Why LLM-Powered Programming is More Mech Suit Than Artificial Human” https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0178-why-llm-powered-progra...
Comment linking /blog/0178-why-llm-powered-programming-is-more-mech-suit-than-artificial-human
on “Stop Thinking of AI as a Coworker. It's an Exoskeleton”Submitted Knowing What Code to Throw Away as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://matthewsinclair.com/ Musings on engineering leadership, innovation, and tech in general
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on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Broad Work vs. Deep Work as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Looking back at everything that happened in machine learning in 2023 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Five “Leadership Craft Moves” as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Protocols to Platforms and Back as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Expanding Pie (and the Cleanup Bill) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek vs. Creativity (part 3) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fifty Two Things I Learned in 2024 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Creativity (part 2) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fifty Two (+) Things I Learned in 2023 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Things I Learned in 2022 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted ChatGPT vs. Creativity (Divergent Association Task) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Attitude, Altitude, and Agency as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Five Proposition Evaluation Heuristics as a story · 1 points
HN discussion