Top all-time · #522
Baldur Bjarnason
Personal blog · baldurbjarnason.comprogrammingwebai
Baldur Bjarnason's personal blog at baldurbjarnason.com covers programming, web and ai. Since 2011, 111 different Hacker News readers have linked it 168 times, most often “Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies (2022)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 38 sampled comments recommend it, 3 are critical?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Baldur Bjarnason for essays on EU tech regulation (Apple, the DMA), software as theory-building, and skepticism of LLMs and AI. Commenters call specific posts great reads.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Called a great post, an all-time great read, and a good read; one commenter says it does a good job on EU regulation and another calls a Baldur essay a nice cor
- Criticised for · 3 comments
- One commenter says a post's claim that EU-related network-asset blocking hurts format adoption is backwards and that the author repeats it obnoxiously. Another
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 38 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
Most-linked posts?
- Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies (2022)11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2022-11-16
- Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management10 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2024-03-05
- Facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to painting4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-04-29
- Software Crisis 2.04 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-08-27
- Programming Is a Pop Culture4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-11-21
- Software developers are not okay4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-10-06
- The Single-Page-App Morality Play3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-09-06
- The Two Worlds of Programming3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-16
- The labour arbitrage theory of dev tool popularity3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-05-03
- Disillusioned with Deno3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-23
What Hacker News says?
Check out the writing of Baldur Bjarnason. There are a lot of blog posts and a book outlining the risks and tradeoffs. https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2023/ai-position/ https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/
Comment linking /2023/ai-position/
on “How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?”Submitted Facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to painting as a story · 615 points
HN discussionOh for Christ's sake, someone pry Baldur off his cross again. > Blocking network assets is a setback for format adoption People are standing here telling him that _allowing_ network assets _is a setback for format adoption_ and he's just going to keep pounding this stupid, obnoxious drum of his until he runs everyone off. > almost all of the problems described would be solved by getting OS vendors (Google, MS, Apple…
Comment linking /notes/amazon-wins/
on “Portable EPUBs”Submitted The deterioration of Google as a story · 378 points
HN discussionThis stuff is gold. A real pro Another great post I found on his site after reading the OP: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/what-do-i-need-to-read-...
Comment linking /2021/what-do-i-need-to-read-to-be-a-css-dev/
on “Facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to painting”Submitted Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management as a story · 352 points
HN discussionI've witnessed how abandoning first principles undermines the evolution of a system. If our mental model of a system is not formalized into first principles (i.e. a high-level specification), then successive generations of engineers will have to re-learn those principles through trial-and-error. They'll introduce mutations and dependencies between the mutations-- and when they leave, the next generation of maintaine…
Comment linking /2022/theory-building/
on “SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)”Submitted What do I need to read to be a CSS dev? as a story · 233 points
HN discussionI follow the following blogs for front-end. * https://adactio.com * https://piccalil.li/blog/ * https://stephaniewalter.design/ * https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/ This post has some good pointers: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/what-do-i-need-to-read-... I'm not sure what other advice to give. A lot of this was collected over time in response to frustrations I felt around the direction front-end has been movin…
Comment linking /2021/what-do-i-need-to-read-to-be-a-css-dev/
on “Pico CSS Framework”Submitted The Single-Page-App Morality Play as a story · 207 points
HN discussionAll-time great read about Apple/EU conflicts: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-e... From the conclusion: > Normally when the EU regulates a given sector, it does so with ample lead time and works with industry to make sure that they understand their obligations. > Apple instead thought that the regulatory contact from the EU during the lead time to the DMA was an opportunity for it to lectu…
Comment linking /2024/facing-reality-in-the-eu-and-tech/
on “Apple vs the Law”Submitted I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps as a story · 190 points
HN discussionyou're spot on. Building software is first and foremost making a team of person understand a problem. The fact that part of it is solved by writing code is almost a byproduct of that understanding, and certainly does not come before. on this topic I suggest everybody who works in our industry to read Peter Naur's "Programming as Theory Building"[1] and a nice corollary from Baldur Bjarnson: "Theory-building and why…
Comment linking /2022/theory-building/
on “GitHub CEO: manual coding remains key despite AI boom”Submitted Let's stop pretending that managers and executives care about productivity as a story · 143 points
HN discussionPodcasts: * http://show.terrifyingrobotdog.com - new and near-future tech and its impact * http://www.unfinished.bz - web design, business, funny stuff * http://devchat.tv/js-jabber - JavaScript * https://boagworld.com/show - web development and business * http://www.relay.fm/rocket - general tech * http://spong.com/podcasts/tsf/ - videogame development Sites and blogs: * http://culture.vg/ - videogame criticism * h…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What tech blogs, podcasts do you follow outside of HN?”Submitted The slow evaporation of the free/open source surplus as a story · 127 points
HN discussion> But, it's a pretty typical EU play. Protecting more established interests but kneecapping progress. EU is literally about removing protections for established interests: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-e...
Comment linking /2024/facing-reality-in-the-eu-and-tech/
on “Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers”Submitted Trusting your own judgement on 'AI' is a risk as a story · 98 points
HN discussionYou should read Baldur Bjarnasson's recent essay, "Trusting your own judgment on AI is a huge risk". https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judge... Excerpt: "Don’t self-experiment with psychological hazards! I can’t stress this enough! "There are many classes of problems that simply cannot be effectively investigated through self-experimentation and doing so exposes you to inflicting Cialdini-style…
Comment linking /2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/
on “LLMs should not replace therapists”Submitted Disillusioned with Deno as a story · 91 points
HN discussionElsewhere in the thread, someone linked this blog post, I think it describes the position of the EU well. https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-e... The conclusion they come to is: the EU will protect the single market even if it makes things harder for their own businesses, the single market is a totally existential issue for the EU, it is the reason it exists.
Comment linking /2024/facing-reality-in-the-eu-and-tech/
on “Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"”Submitted Facebook and the media: united, they attack the web as a story · 89 points
HN discussionyep. From Baldur Bjarnason: > For months, we’ve been hearing leaks about Apple’s talks with the EU about the Digital Market Act. Those talks were not negotiations even though Apple seems to have thought they were. https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-e... The EU cannot allow a large business to mess around like this.
Comment linking /2024/facing-reality-in-the-eu-and-tech/
on “Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"”Submitted The deskilling of web dev is harming us all as a story · 83 points
HN discussionSimilar argument to https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judge... , but I like this one better because at least it doesn’t try to pull the rhetorical trick of slipping from “we can’t know whether LLMs are helping because we haven’t studied the question systematically” to “actually we do know, and they’re shit”.
Comment linking /2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/
on “Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking”Submitted Over-engineering is under-engineering as a story · 63 points
HN discussionThis article is blowing my mind, as is the linked article "Agile as Trauma"[1], written by apparently a different author but with a very similar broad perspective. I want to read more like this. [1] https://doriantaylor.com/agile-as-trauma [update: holy cow, this one too https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2021/software-crisis-2/ Today is turning into "read about existential problems with how software is developed" day…
Comment linking /2021/software-crisis-2/
on “The Single-Page-App Morality Play”Submitted The one about the web developer job market as a story · 61 points
HN discussionWhat were the arguments in favour of SPAs in the first place? I'm finding it interesting that most of the top HN submissions (by popularity) matching "single page app" are critical, not positive. First 15 follow, all but 5 are negative: - You probably don't need a single-page app ( https://journal.plausible.io/you-probably-dont-need-a-single... ) 816 points | 6 years ago | 499 comments - A single-page app is almost…
Comment linking /2021/single-page-app-morality-play/
on “Building websites with lots of little HTML pages”Submitted Software developers are not okay as a story · 52 points
HN discussion
