Top all-time · #6703
ample code
Personal blog · einarwh.wordpress.comprogrammingcareer
ample code is a personal blog at einarwh.wordpress.com about programming and career. Since 2016, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times, most often “Into the Tar Pit”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link ample code for essays on software complexity and requirements, such as the 'Into the tar pit' post on the inherent difficulty of building software systems.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Illusions of magic and smoke rings in code
Most-linked posts?
- Into the Tar Pit3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-05-22
- Death of a Craftsman2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-04-05
- Pragmatism is poison2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-03-11
- Picture combinators and recursive fish2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-07-22
What Hacker News says?
There was an excellent blog post recently on the inherence complexity of building software systems and how it boils down to understanding the problem, or "extracting requirements out of people" as you say: https://einarwh.wordpress.com/2020/05/19/into-the-tar-pit/
Comment linking /2020/05/19/into-the-tar-pit/
on “Software will eat software in a remote-first world”Submitted On the complexity of JSON serialization (2020) as a story · 92 points
HN discussionNo, on the contrary I'm saying that calls for nuance are often excuses to do bad statistics and bad science. Rather than throwing away our theories because they predict X and the world does Y, they instead say "actually the theory only applies under vague unspecified circumstances which you'd understand if you were as nuanced as I". Whether or not the theory fits the data, they cry "intersectionality" or "humans are…
Comment linking /2016/03/10/pragmatism-is-poison/
on “Fuck Nuance [pdf]”Submitted Into the Tar Pit as a story · 47 points
HN discussionSubmitted Pragmatism is poison as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted No Programming as Other as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Technical Debt Isn't Technical as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don’t Settle for a Playground as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Death of a Craftsman as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Death of a Craftsman as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Picture combinators and recursive fish as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Picture combinators and recursive fish – generating Escher woodcut with F# as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Donkey Code – the art of naming things as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Programmer vs. Developer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Into the Tar Pit as a story · 1 points
HN discussion