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ashishb.net
Personal blog · ashishb.net · on HN as ashishbprogrammingweb
ashishb.net is a personal blog at ashishb.net about programming and web. Since 2013, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 104 times, most often “The first two statements of your BASH script should be”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-17, and you can follow it by feed.
A collection of selected posts
Most-linked posts?
- The first two statements of your BASH script should be3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-04-15
- How to deploy side projects as web services for free2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-04-19
- Common Pitfalls of GitHub Actions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-27
- Too much documentation is harmful2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-01
- LLMs: Great for Business but Bad Business2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-27
- Repairing Database on the Fly for Users2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-05
- Always support compressed response in an API service2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-12
What Hacker News says?
React native is broadly an inferior option. LLMs made it way worse https://ashishb.net/tech/react-native/
Comment linking /tech/react-native/
on “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin”Submitted It is hard to recommend Google Cloud as a story · 243 points
HN discussionI wrote about my experience while looking for a personal laptop in 2013: https://ashishb.net/tech/the-weird-state-of-laptop-industry/ Little has changed since then. There is still a considerable gap, and no one is building a developer laptop. What surprises me is the amount of energy Google is pouring into Chromebooks, they could have made an excellent (GCP-integrated?) developer laptop instead. For backend engineer…
Comment linking /tech/the-weird-state-of-laptop-industry/
on “Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard”Submitted Maintaining an Android app in Google Play Store is a lot of work as a story · 156 points
HN discussionRun npm and yarn inside docker [1]. Infact, do this for all risky tools[2] 1 - https://github.com/ashishb/dotfiles/blob/067de6f90c72f0cf849... 2 - https://ashishb.net/programming/run-tools-inside-docker/
Comment linking /programming/run-tools-inside-docker/
on “Shai-Hulud Returns: Over 300 NPM Packages Infected”Submitted How to Run Python in Production as a story · 34 points
HN discussionTrue that. The Taleb trilogy is great. Here are some notes I took from them - https://ashishb.net/?s=taleb
Comment linking /?s=taleb
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?”Submitted It is hard to recommend Python in production as a story · 33 points
HN discussionI once ended up doing 'rm -rf *' by mistake - https://ashishb.net/tech/my-rm-rf-moment/
Comment linking /tech/my-rm-rf-moment/
on “A terrible schema from a clueless programmer”Submitted To keep your machine secure, run third-party tools inside Docker as a story · 13 points
HN discussionJavaScript is meant to be run in a browser. Not on a backend server [1]. Those who are choosing JS for the backend are irresponsible stewards of their customers' data. 1- https://ashishb.net/tech/javascript/
Comment linking /tech/javascript/
on “RCE Vulnerability in React and Next.js”Submitted The first two statements of your BASH script should be as a story · 13 points
HN discussionRun these tools inside Docker[1] 1 - https://ashishb.net/programming/run-tools-inside-docker/
Comment linking /programming/run-tools-inside-docker/
on “Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of whole drive”Submitted The Indian startup bubble is insane as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI run all npm based tools inside Docker with no access beyond the current directory. https://ashishb.net/programming/run-tools-inside-docker/ It does reduce the attach surface drastically.
Comment linking /programming/run-tools-inside-docker/
on “Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published”Submitted How to deploy side projects as web services for free as a story · 10 points
HN discussionGoogle cloud run https://ashishb.net/tech/how-to-deploy-side-projects-as-web-...
Comment linking /tech/how-to-deploy-side-projects-as-web-services-for-free/
on “Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?”Submitted Ship tools as standalone static binaries as a story · 8 points
HN discussionHere's my `npm` command these days. It reduces the attack surface drastically. alias npm='docker run --rm -it -v ${PWD}:${PWD} --net=host --workdir=${PWD} node:25-bookworm-slim npm' - No access to my env vars - No access to anything outside my current directory (usually a JS project). - No access to my .bashrc or other files. Ref: https://ashishb.net/programming/run-tools-inside-docker/
Comment linking /programming/run-tools-inside-docker/
on “NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times”Submitted Google Search is losing to Perplexity as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> The Android tooling is basically a textbook definition of oversized enterprisey software. I really wish there was just a frigging (resource) compiler, linker and maybe packer that I could invoke from the command line in simple steps. Yeah, I feel the same. There are CLI approaches that I have encapsulated into Makefile ( https://ashishb.net/all/use-makefile-for-android ) and GitHub Actions ( https://github.com/ash…
Comment linking /all/use-makefile-for-android
on “Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make”Submitted Repairing Database on the Fly for Users as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThe JavaScript fanatics will downvote me for saying this, but I'll say this, "using a single JavaScript codebase on your client-side and server-side is like cooking food in your toilet, sooner or later, contamination is guaranteed" [1] 1 - https://ashishb.net/tech/javascript/
Comment linking /tech/javascript/
on “Denial of service and source code exposure in React Server Components”Submitted LLMs: Great for Business but Bad Business as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThere are a lot of subtle pitfalls as well. Like no default timeouts, excess permissions etc. I wrote about it in detail https://ashishb.net/tech/common-pitfalls-of-github-actions/ And even created a tool to generate good configs http://github.com/ashishb/gabo
Comment linking /tech/common-pitfalls-of-github-actions/
on “I'll think twice before using GitHub Actions again”Submitted Communicating schwa is impossible in written English as a story · 7 points
HN discussionJavaScript fanatics will downvote me, but I will say again. JavaScript is meant to be run in an untrusted environment (think browser), and running it in any form of trusted environment increases the risk drastically [1] The language is too hard to do a meaningful static analysis. This particular attack is much harder (though not impossible) to execute in Java, Go, or Rust-based packages. 1 - https://ashishb.net/tech…
Comment linking /tech/javascript/
on “Lotusbail npm package found to be harvesting WhatsApp messages and contacts”Submitted Best practices for using Python and uv inside Docker as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI love end to end tests even for personal projects https://ashishb.net/all/bad-and-good-ways-to-write-automated...
Comment linking /all/bad-and-good-ways-to-write-automated-tests/
on “How I Program in 2024”Submitted The real lock-in in GitHub is not the code, but the stars as a story · 6 points
HN discussion