Top all-time · #4262
Benjie Holson
Personal blog · generalrobots.substack.comhardwareprogrammingbusiness
Benjie Holson writes General Robots, a personal blog at generalrobots.substack.com about hardware, programming and business. Since 2023, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 34 times, most often “Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Benjie Holson's robotics writing on humanoid robots, dexterity, visual programming and his "Humanoid Olympics" challenge to roboticists. One commenter calls the writing excellent.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A series about making a general purpose robot company.
Most-linked posts?
- Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-09-09
- The Mythical Non-Roboticist4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-03-14
- A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-06-10
- Humanoid Robots: Dollars and GPTs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-05-21
- ML for Robots: Hybrid Learned vs. End-to-End Learned2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-27
What Hacker News says?
> One reason is because we think that other, more inexperienced, programmers might have an easier time with visual programming. If only code wasn't as scary! If only it was visual! Reminds me of the Mythical Non-Roboticist: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/the-mythical-non-roboti...
Comment linking /p/the-mythical-non-roboticist
on “We need visual programming. No, not like that”Submitted The Mythical Non-Roboticist as a story · 199 points
HN discussionhttps://generalrobots.substack.com/p/benjies-humanoid-olympi... "Use a key", about halfway down
Comment linking /p/benjies-humanoid-olympic-games
on “Why today's humanoids won't learn dexterity”Submitted Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games as a story · 146 points
HN discussionThanks, Benjie! Great to see you here. I hope it's OK if I plug your excellent writings on robotics that I think everyone should check out: https://generalrobots.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Launch HN: Azalea Robotics (YC S24) – Baggage-handling robots for airports”Submitted A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics as a story · 132 points
HN discussionEarlier discussion of the original ( https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/benjies-humanoid-olympi... ) article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45609922
Comment linking /p/benjies-humanoid-olympic-games
on “A Challenge to Roboticists: My Humanoid Olympics”Submitted Single-Use Disposable Applications as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI really want to see that robot door-opening, shirt-folding, orange-peeling and sandwich making competition. It would be like the housework championships. If your robot works it would sell like hotcakes right there. edit: realised there's a part 2: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/benjies-humanoid-olympi...
Comment linking /p/benjies-humanoid-olympics-part-ii
on “Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Robotics as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is a little tool I made to try and figure out how to make humanoid startups profitable. It goes with this blog post: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/humanoid-robots-dollars... . I thought folks here might like to play with it.
Comment linking /p/humanoid-robots-dollars-and-gpts
on “Robotics Startup CEO Simulator”Submitted Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Game as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Humanoid Robots: Dollars and GPTs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Whats with All the Humanoid Robots? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing Libraries for AIs to Use as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted posetree.py: Wrangling Timestamps and Transforms for Robots as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted ML for Robots, Specialization vs. Overfitting as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Build a Robot Company? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vibe-Cadding in Codex as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Physical Intelligence Sweeps Humanoid Olympics as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Mythical Non-Roboticist (2024) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Mythical Non-Roboticist (2024) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games (A Competition for Humanoid Robots) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Humanoid Olympic Games as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Correct vs. Good as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tech Debt and Robots as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Robot Startups: Nailing the Demo as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Programming Robots: Keeping the Code Clean as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted General Purpose Robotics: How to pick a problem as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted ML for Robots: Hybrid Learned vs. End-to-End Learned as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
