Top all-time · #705
Brad Frost
Personal blog · bradfrost.comdesignweb
Brad Frost's personal blog at bradfrost.com covers design and web. Since 2014, 91 different Hacker News readers have linked it 111 times, most often “Atomic Design – Brad Frost”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (25) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Brad Frost's Atomic Design posts and his essays on front-end practice, ads and logins. Commenters cite the atomic design post as the reference for component-based design systems.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called 'worth reading', 'wonderful' and worth checking out; one says the atomic design post is better than the linked one.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 25 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I'm Brad Frost, an independent creator, web designer & developer, teacher, speaker, writer, musician, and artist based in Pittsburgh, PA.
Most-linked posts?
- Atomic Design – Brad Frost7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-07-18
- Atomic Web Design6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2015-08-12
- A Global Design System5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-01-09
- Front-of-the-Front-End and Back-of-the-Front-End Web Development4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-02-16
- Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-02-14
- My struggle to learn React3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-05-09
- Front end Design3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-02-18
- Design Systems in the Time of AI2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-02
- Surviving the New MacBook Pro2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-21
- Full-Stack Developers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-14
What Hacker News says?
When you say "atomic", do you mean atomic design as popularized by Brad Frost? [1] Are you using atomic design or some other design system? [1] http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web-design/
Comment linking /blog/post/atomic-web-design/
on “How Stripe teaches employees to code”Submitted Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms as a story · 1124 points
HN discussionNope, I've worked with and on design systems since 2010. And Brad Frost's Atomic Design [0], a formal system for developing a design system, was first written in 2013. 0 - https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web-design/
Comment linking /blog/post/atomic-web-design/
on “USWDS: The United States Web Design System”Submitted Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch as a story · 1111 points
HN discussionWorth reading the follow-up post: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/living-with-bullshit/ He's not against ads. He's against shitty ads that piss off customers. Anybody know if there actually are any studies that show that these ads (1) help businesses attract clients and (2) do so without alienating more clients than they attract? Or are they all just for businesses that don't care about keeping customers anyways (e.g…
Comment linking /blog/post/living-with-bullshit/
on “Death to Bullshit”Submitted Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch as a story · 457 points
HN discussionAll of this "bullshit" exists because it works. What's amazing is that the author pays his own bills as a result of such bullshit existing. The companies he's consulting to don't magically make money from nothing.[0] [0] - http://bradfrost.com/web/
Comment linking /web/
on “Death to Bullshit”Submitted Ditching the MacBook Pro for a MacBook Air as a story · 368 points
HN discussion> Maybe not all my clients support javascript, but substantially all I care about do. See here: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/fuck-you/ > I even take advantage of this on my blog by rigging a field in the comments section to not be visible for users but be visible for spammer bots, so that they will fill it out and the software can auto-reject it. That is a reverse CAPTCHA, it works very well, and has absolutely no…
Comment linking /blog/post/fuck-you/
on “Things to Know When Making a Web Application in 2015”Submitted My struggle to learn React as a story · 230 points
HN discussionOk, so Brad is already making sweeping declarations about React, yet less than a month ago he specifically posted about his struggle to learn it: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/my-struggle-to-learn-react/ cool...
Comment linking /blog/post/my-struggle-to-learn-react/
on “React is the new jQuery”Submitted React is the new jQuery as a story · 225 points
HN discussionthis reminds me of a similar blog https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/just/
Comment linking /blog/post/just/
on “Stop saying "just" (2019)”Submitted Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide as a story · 204 points
HN discussionAre you referring to posts like this?: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/my-struggle-to-learn-react/ "There’s a giant, great JavaScript community out there, but I feel like a lot of times there’s an implied (or sometimes explicit) 'OBVIOUSLY' or 'just' that comes with a lot of the territory. For instance, I was confused why there are different ways to create components in React, and several people tersely responded 'it…
Comment linking /blog/post/my-struggle-to-learn-react/
on “Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide”Submitted You probably don’t need input type=“number” as a story · 145 points
HN discussionPersonally, I found that working with clients where everyone, designers included, followed the principles laid out in atomic design[1] (or closely enough), not matter the tools used, and favoured reusing existing components, was much simpler and pleasant. But it usually only went as far as having the designers follow it in Sketch, Figma or whatever, and the devs separately implementing the components themselves. Wha…
Comment linking /blog/post/atomic-web-design/
on “Storybook: UI component explorer for front end developers”Submitted Surviving the New MacBook Pro as a story · 121 points
HN discussionI love how this article cites Brad Frost's "Don't Get Clever with Login Forms"[1], yet at the same time advocates specifically for doing one of the "don'ts" listed in that cited article ("don't split login across multiple pages"). Reading through Twilio's article, I still don't see a satisfactory explanation why they did it this way instead of just presenting both fields plus a list of buttons for other authenticati…
Comment linking /blog/post/dont-get-clever-with-login-forms/
on “Why are the username and password on two different pages?”Submitted Big ol’ ball o’ JavaScript as a story · 95 points
HN discussion> Is someone forcing you to use it against your will? I mean, kind of? My problem with GraphQL isn't necessarily GraphQL itself, but with the sprawl of things creeping further and further into client-side code. As companies are finding GraphQL to "unlock greater developer productivity", it's becoming more and more expected to have this in our toolkit as "front-end people". There's been a few blog posts recently that…
Comment linking /blog/post/front-of-the-front-end-and-back-of-the-front-end-web-development/
on “SwiftGraphQL – A GraphQL client that lets you forget about GraphQL”Submitted Front-of-the-Front-End and Back-of-the-Front-End Web Development as a story · 86 points
HN discussionThis is from Atomic Design[0], but are you commenting on the right article? [0] https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web-design/
Comment linking /blog/post/atomic-web-design/
on “Ireland's Health Service Open Sources Official Covid-19 Tracking App”Submitted Design systems, agile, and industrialization as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI have a long history of doing "community development" type work both online and off. And that includes being lead mod for an organization trying to make the transition to registered non-profit and volunteer work of various sorts over the years and so forth. It's actually hard to communicate what I do. I'm sort of like the "mortar" person described in this article about trying to convey your job title: https://bradf…
Comment linking /blog/post/job-title-its-complicated/
on “The Niche I am Looking to Fill”Submitted “Just” (2015) as a story · 22 points
HN discussionAgreed. No reason to show more than 100+ entries on a single table. Event sourcing isn't about UI patterns but rather one level beyond it: the "back of the frontend" [1]: [1]: https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/front-of-the-front-end-and-b...
Comment linking /blog/post/front-of-the-front-end-and-back-of-the-front-end-web-development/
on “Show HN: Hyper – Standards-first React alternative”Submitted Raw-Dogging Websites as a story · 8 points
HN discussionGo for http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web-design/ instead. His site over HTTPS uses a self-signed certificate that expired over eight years ago.
Comment linking /blog/post/atomic-web-design/
on “Using component-based design helps us build faster”Submitted A Global Design System as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
