Top all-time · #197
Atomic Spin
Company blog · spin.atomicobject.comprogramming
Atomic Spin is the company blog at spin.atomicobject.com, writing about programming. Since 2009, 240 different Hacker News readers have linked it 2,724 times, most often “Visualizing Garbage Collection Algorithms”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Atomic Object's engineering blog for practical posts on shell history logging, compile times, typed-language testing and estimation, and the company's job ads point readers to it.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- Visualizing Garbage Collection Algorithms8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2014-09-03
- How and Why to Log Your Bash History7 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2016-05-31
- Fixing the External Monitor Color Problem with Your 2018 MacBook Pro (2018)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-12-20
- Mean Shift Clustering4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-05-26
- 2 Ways to Use Single-Member structs in C3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-03-26
- Parallelize Development Using Git Worktrees3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-06-26
- Go Home Swift Compiler, You’re Drunk3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-04-26
- Type-Driven Development – Replacing Unit Tests with Types in TypeScript3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-01-22
- Yer a Developer, Harry – Programming Is Magic (2014)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-07-08
- Why I Prefer Makefiles over Package.json Scripts3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-22
What Hacker News says?
Have you tried temporary containers Firefox plugin -- it's basically automated private mode for everything. Article about it -- https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/10/29/virtual-browsers-fi... Extension -- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
Comment linking /2018/10/29/virtual-browsers-firefox-containers/
on “Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand”Submitted Do you really need Redis? How to get away with just PostgreSQL as a story · 841 points
HN discussionCould you explain what you mean by that a little more? I looked at the Clustering section of the Wikipedia page for Mean-Shift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_shift#Clustering but I don't get how C and r are chosen, nor how the method is supposed to be "non-parametric" given that you need such parameters to begin with. Also, how are you supposed to assign all points to separate clusters, and how would you determ…
Comment linking /2015/05/26/mean-shift-clustering/
on “Ask HN: What's your favorite elegant/beautiful algorithm?”Submitted Unix Commands I Wish I’d Discovered Years Earlier as a story · 480 points
HN discussionAtomic Object | Developer, Designer | Ann Arbor, MI ; Grand Rapids, MI | ONSITE | Full Time We are a custom software design and development consultancy. We do a full range of development from high level design prototypes, down to low level firmware on embedded devices and everything in between. Want an idea of the work we do and the technology we work with? Check out our blog: our blog: https://spin.atomicobject.com…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)”Submitted How and Why to Log Your Bash History as a story · 376 points
HN discussionA great time saver for me was simply setting up better bash history and search capabilities[1]. I wrote a wrapper function, sbh (search bash history) that allows me to input date strings like "2 months ago", or "last week", which narrows the search. Linux 'date' function with --date string arg is pretty powerful[2]. 1 - https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/05/28/log-bash-history/ 2 - https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2013/…
Comment linking /2016/05/28/log-bash-history/
on “Building personal search infrastructure for your knowledge and code”Submitted Visualizing Garbage Collection Algorithms as a story · 329 points
HN discussionStrange, most blogs that I've read discuss the pain involved. http://spin.atomicobject.com/2014/06/06/f-sharp-mono-unix/ I guess it's the same with any new product or language: when there are a lot more great testimonials than cries of pain, then it's actually safe to use that product.
Comment linking /2014/06/06/f-sharp-mono-unix/
on “Bazel – Correct, reproducible, fast builds for everyone”Submitted You're Worthwhile, Even When You Make Mistakes as a story · 277 points
HN discussionOn your Mac, iMessages are stored in a SQLite database which you can inspect. https://spin.atomicobject.com/2020/05/22/search-imessage-sql...
Comment linking /2020/05/22/search-imessage-sql/
on “It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage”Submitted Why I Prefer Makefiles over Package.json Scripts as a story · 235 points
HN discussionhttps://spin.atomicobject.com/2020/05/22/search-imessage-sql...
Comment linking /2020/05/22/search-imessage-sql/
on “It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage”Submitted Small teams are dramatically more efficient than large teams as a story · 226 points
HN discussionI see bugs in my code very rarely nowadays, and they're always things I should have seen beforehand. In my experience if you're seeing edge cases at all they're a sign that your model is wrong - the business processes we're replacing with software are always simple, there's really no reason for code to ever be complex. The problems we get are those we introduce for ourselves by overcomplicating things in code. I do…
Comment linking /2014/12/09/typed-language-tdd-part1/
on “Kent Beck: “I get paid for code that works, not for tests” (2013)”Submitted Attitudes That Lead to Maintainable Code as a story · 225 points
HN discussionI don't think it's 10x slower but it's definitely slower. If you have lots of "complicated" type inferencing the compiler does have problems: https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/04/26/swift-long-compile-... https://thatthinginswift.com/debug-long-compile-times-swift/
Comment linking /2016/04/26/swift-long-compile-time/
on “Server APIs Project”Submitted I Don't Use Classes as a story · 213 points
HN discussionAtomic Object | Developer, Designer | Ann Arbor, MI ; Grand Rapids, MI | ONSITE | Full Time We are a custom software design and development consultancy. We do a full range of development from high level design prototypes, down to low level firmware on embedded devices and everything in between. Want an idea of the work we do and the technology we work with? Check out our blog: our blog: https://spin.atomicobject.com…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2015)”Submitted First Impressions of a $9 CHIP Computer as a story · 213 points
HN discussionAtomic Object - Detroit, MI - Ann Arbor, MI - Grand Rapids, MI Developers and Designers - Full Time, on-site We are a custom software design and development consultancy. We do a full range of development from high level design prototypes, down to low level firmware on embedded devices and everything in between. Want an idea of the work we do and the technology we work with? Check out our blog: our blog: https://spin…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2015)”Submitted Do you need Redis? PostgreSQL does queuing, locking, and pub/sub (2021) as a story · 197 points
HN discussionAtomic Object - Detroit, MI - Ann Arbor, MI - Grand Rapids, MI Developers and Designers - Full Time, on-site We are a custom software design and development consultancy. We do a full range of development from high level design prototypes, down to low level firmware on embedded devices and everything in between. Want an idea of the work we do and the technology we work with? Check out our blog: our blog: https://spin…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2015)”Submitted How to Pick Your Battles on a Software Team as a story · 190 points
HN discussionFirst blog I thought of, although it's not a company: Dolphin. https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/ As for actual companies, as an embedded dev I think Atomic Object ( https://spin.atomicobject.com ) and Free Electrons ( http://free-electrons.com/blog/ ) both do a good job.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which companies have the best blogs written by their engineering team?”Submitted Recovering deleted files using grep as a story · 168 points
HN discussionAtomic Object | Developer, Designer | Ann Arbor, MI ; Grand Rapids, MI | ONSITE | Full Time We are a custom software design and development consultancy. We do a full range of development from high level design prototypes, down to low level firmware on embedded devices and everything in between. Want an idea of the work we do and the technology we work with? Check out our blog: https://spin.atomicobject.com/ Being an…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2015)”Submitted What I Learned from Working 32 Hours a Week as a story · 151 points
HN discussionIf you're having color banding, you may need to force RGB on your external monitor [1]. I had to do this a few years ago, it massively improved the picture. That said, I was in disbelief that this was a problem that both was common enough to be all over the Internet, and so involved to fix. Amazes me that OSX doesn't simply have an advanced setting for RGB/YPrPb, and instead requires that you boot into Recovery Mode…
Comment linking /2018/08/24/macbook-pro-external-monitor-display-problem/
on “Windows 10 20H2: ChkDsk damages filesystem on SSDs with KB4592438 installed”Submitted Why Is Your Team Falling Behind? Ask ‘The Penny Game’ as a story · 149 points
HN discussion
