Top all-time · #1459
Ben Balter
Personal blog · ben.balter.com · on HN as benbalterprogrammingcareer
Ben Balter's personal blog at ben.balter.com covers programming and career. Since 2011, 51 different Hacker News readers have linked it 78 times, most often “The difference between 18F and USDS”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
I'm Ben Balter, and I write here about developer platforms, product and engineering leadership, open source, and showing your work.
Most-linked posts?
- The difference between 18F and USDS6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2015-04-23
- You probably shouldn’t add a CLA to your open source project (2018)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-01-03
- The difference between 18F and USDS (2015)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-02-08
- Pull requests are a form of documentation3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-05-20
- Rules of Communicating at GitHub2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-11-07
- Analysis of Federal Executive .Govs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-08-13
- Reorgs Happen2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-06-09
- Why you should work asynchronously2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-17
- The Zen of GitHub2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-21
- Work Loudly2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-14
What Hacker News says?
Here is my list of solo developer blogs. Usually they are on topic. This does not include personal blogs I follow that happen to be developers. @mdo (Bootstrop) - http://markdotto.com/ Keith Cirkel - https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/ Coding – Corbin's Treehouse - https://www.corbinstreehouse.com/blog Aaditya Purani – Ethical Hacker - https://aadityapurani.com/ Ben Balter - http://ben.balter.com/ fulldecent - https://pr…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are good solo developer blogs that you enjoy reading?”Submitted How I re–over-engineered my home network for privacy and security as a story · 345 points
HN discussion> Even if through some process the license changes in the future, your contributions were still to an open source license and that version of the code will remain open forever. Well, that's a good take. You're right of course: the exact version of the codebase you contributed to, was licensed as OSS and it will always stay like that. So yes, copyleft is more about providing guarantees about the future, while non-cop…
Comment linking /2018/01/02/why-you-probably-shouldnt-add-a-cla-to-your-open-source-project/
on “Show HN: Lightspeed – subsecond, open source, self hosted stream from OBS”Submitted Problems, not solutions (2018) as a story · 122 points
HN discussionhttps://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f... "Unlike 18F, which is approached by agencies asking for help, USDS has a shortlist of administration priorities that it actively pursues."
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2020)”Submitted Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently as a story · 48 points
HN discussionI found this: https://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f... From this description, it seems they're different approaches to the same problem of "fixing US govt IT projects", with USDS being more of a reactive group with power to act on behalf of the White House and therefore bypass agency structures. I would be very interested in hearing from the fellow from USDS as well though.
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2020)”Submitted What is a 'Hacker'? as a story · 41 points
HN discussionHere's a write-up on the differences (and similarities) that I've found: http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-... .
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “Staying with the US Digital Service”Submitted You probably shouldn’t add a CLA to your open source project (2018) as a story · 38 points
HN discussionAlso check out 18F [1], which focuses on pushing forward how tech and the government work together. They run a 12-month Presidential Innovation Fellows program [2] which works more intensely on innovating with specific groups within the federal government. USDS is more focused on modernizing and ensuring some basic technical functionality of a lot of the core aspects of the government (which is incredibly important…
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “The US digital service”Submitted Why technologists don't want to work at a government agency as a story · 37 points
HN discussionI'd suggest this tool ( http://ben.balter.com/2015/02/06/word-diff/ ) my colleague (@benbalter) made to collaborate on Word docs using GitHub.
Comment linking /2015/02/06/word-diff/
on “YC Open-Source Sales Agreement”Submitted The difference between 18F and USDS as a story · 14 points
HN discussionI'm guessing it's in Word format because most procurement departments use (and expect a Word document) for terms. But I very much agree, that it'd be great to have it on GitHub for collaboration. I'd even suggest this tool ( http://ben.balter.com/2015/02/06/word-diff/ ) my colleague (@benbalter) made to collaborate on Word docs using GitHub.
Comment linking /2015/02/06/word-diff/
on “YC Open-Source Sales Agreement”Submitted Rules of Communicating at GitHub as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThey work just like any other Markdown file, and you can include a link in the rendered site to edit. See http://ben.balter.com/2015/09/13/github-pages-edit-button/ .
Comment linking /2015/09/13/github-pages-edit-button/
on “GitHub pages is now running Jekyll 3”Submitted Using GitHub Actions to get notified when an API response (or web page) changes as a story · 9 points
HN discussionHTTPS can also be used to protect you from malware [1] [2] and stop censorship [3]. If anything, news sites should be among the first to adopt strong HTTPS connections since many people visit them and the news also needs to not be censored. [1] https://citizenlab.org/2014/08/cat-video-and-the-death-of-cl... [2] http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2014/AP-Seattle-Tim... [3] http://ben.balter.com/2015/01/06/https…
Comment linking /2015/01/06/https-all-the-things/
on “HTTP/2.0 — Bad protocol, bad politics”Submitted How I Over-Engineered My Book as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSeems like it's mostly a philosophical difference. Two directions to the same goal. http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-...
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “18F launches cloud.gov”Submitted Work Loudly as a story · 4 points
HN discussion18F is also based on GDS. 18f.gov Explanation of the difference between USDS and 18F: http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-...
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “Why Britain banned mobile apps for government agencies”Submitted Why everything should have a URL as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIf anyone is interested, the FCC has a fairly comprehensive list of Developers pages for other federal agencies: http://www.fcc.gov/developers (on the right column). Also, for further reading on the topic of .gov APIs, http://ben.balter.com/2012/06/02/publishing-government-data-... is a great start.
Comment linking /2012/06/02/publishing-government-data-that-developers-will-actually-use/
on “The US Census now has an API”Submitted The Rule of No Surprises as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf anyone reading this is looking for a more permanent job working for the government, check out https://18f.gsa.gov/ which is trying to build up a modern software group which provides services for the rest of the government. Ben Balter, Github's Government evangelist, summarized the difference between the two here: http://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-... (Disclaimer: I don't work there but k…
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service”Submitted Reorgs Happen as a story · 3 points
HN discussion18F is part of the General Services Administration and was ostensibly tasked to not just work on IT (for GSA, and others) but to develop and promulgate best practices across the federal agencies. A 2015 blog post about "The difference between 18F and USDS": https://ben.balter.com/2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f... > The [Presidential Innovation Fellows] program was a success, and soon after a group called 18F…
Comment linking /2015/04/22/the-difference-between-18f-and-usds/
on “The rise and fall of 18F”Submitted The Zen of GitHub as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
