Top all-time · #4706
Brandon Smith
Personal blog · brandons.me/blog · on HN as brundolfprogramming
Brandon Smith's personal blog at brandons.me covers programming. Since 2020, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Write Libraries, Not Frameworks”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-05, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Brandon Smith's posts on software design, especially the argument for libraries over frameworks, plus advice on writing less code and a write-up of the Bagel language.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Code and words enthusiast. Staff-level engineer available for contracting and consulting.
Most-linked posts?
- Write Libraries, Not Frameworks6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-05-09
- Casual Parsing in JavaScript3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-17
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-22
- Write code. Not too much. Mostly functions.3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-21
- The Bagel Language2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-09-17
- Why Rust strings seem hard2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-04-14
- Rust's BufRead, and When to Use It2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-01
- /blog/favorite-rust-function2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-14
- Update on the Bagel language2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-24
What Hacker News says?
Probably a call-back to this post that made the rounds on HN a few months ago: https://www.brandons.me/blog/write-code-not-too-much-mostly-...
Comment linking /blog/write-code-not-too-much-mostly-functions
on “It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code (2020)”Submitted Write Libraries, Not Frameworks as a story · 1044 points
HN discussion+1 for MobX, can't recommend it enough [also a quick shill for the general-purpose language I'm working on which internalizes that mechanism at the language level :)] https://www.brandons.me/blog/the-bagel-language
Comment linking /blog/the-bagel-language
on “Hooks Considered Harmful”Submitted Write code. Not too much. Mostly functions. as a story · 825 points
HN discussionA String can be returned like any other owned value; whether or not a &str can be returned depends on lifetimes, as it does with any other reference. Lifetimes seem out of scope for this post, and the lifetimes story for strings isn't really strings-specific enough that it felt important to cover. There are other resources out there that thoroughly cover the topic of lifetimes; in fact I wrote a short summary myself…
Comment linking /blog/favorite-rust-function
on “Why Rust strings seem hard”Submitted Why Rust strings seem hard as a story · 254 points
HN discussionIt is always a good idea to write a library, not so for frameworks https://www.brandons.me/blog/libraries-not-frameworks
Comment linking /blog/libraries-not-frameworks
on “Rust needs a web framework”Submitted Thoughts on Testing as a story · 71 points
HN discussionI wrote a blog post that tries to bridge this gap: https://www.brandons.me/blog/why-rust-strings-seem-hard
Comment linking /blog/why-rust-strings-seem-hard
on “What is `Box<str>` and how is it different from `String` in Rust?”Submitted The Bagel Language as a story · 69 points
HN discussionThank you. Just checked out the Bagel post ( https://www.brandons.me/blog/the-bagel-language ) and it looks really cool. Identifying pure functions (whether that is by syntax annotation or from synthesis) is a really good idea, gives me some ideas for doing function inlining in Ezno. I like the "Misc niceties" section, a few of those may of may not be on Ezno's todo list :) The automatic / inferred generic restricti…
Comment linking /blog/the-bagel-language
on “Show HN: Ezno, a type checker for JavaScript and optimiser for React”Submitted Update on the Bagel language as a story · 50 points
HN discussionLinks for those wondering: Blog: https://www.brandons.me/tags/bagel.html HN (53 comments, 1 yr ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28566597 gh: https://github.com/brundonsmith/bagel
Comment linking /tags/bagel.html
on “Show HN: Ezno, a type checker for JavaScript and optimiser for React”Submitted Casual Parsing in JavaScript as a story · 38 points
HN discussionMy TypeScript-like language (still a work in progress) does that :) https://www.brandons.me/blog/bagel-bites-refinement
Comment linking /blog/bagel-bites-refinement
on “Show HN: Ezno, a type checker for JavaScript and optimiser for React”Submitted Three Kinds of Polymorphism in Rust as a story · 34 points
HN discussionI wrote some code for my site that 1) finds the most active link to the post on HN, and 2) uses the HN API to pull in and render its comments at the bottom. The site is statically-rendered, but there's a bit of client-side JS that loads the latest comments when you visit the page. Most of the work is done on the back-end; the front-end just grabs the content and drops it in. Example: https://www.brandons.me/blog/thr…
Comment linking /blog/three-types-of-data
on “Various ways to include comments on a static site (2018)”Submitted You have to be able to reason about the verification as a story · 3 points
HN discussionReact is a framework that doesn't want to admit it's a framework. If you follow its recommendations like Hooks, you have to write your JS a "special way" since React owns your component lifecycle. Put simply, React calls your component, your component does not call React. Your UI code needs to work inside of React, not around it. The relevant and most upvoted HN article on the difference between libraries and framew…
Comment linking /blog/libraries-not-frameworks
on “React Internals (2017)”Submitted The Bagel Language as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'm working on one! It's not ready to be shown off yet, but I outlined the core ideas here: https://www.brandons.me/blog/the-bagel-language
Comment linking /blog/the-bagel-language
on “Senegal Programming Language”Submitted You have to be able to reason about the verification as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPlease do realize that according to your own web site ( https://www.brandons.me/ ) you're a javascript developer having opinions on why Godot is supposedly catching up with Unreal Engine to the point that it's becoming a threat.
Comment linking /
on “Godot Arrives in the Epic Games Store”Submitted Why Rust strings seem hard as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMy website gets a perfect score on Lighthouse - total download size without images is 7.1kB - and it supports dark mode: https://www.brandons.me/ The dark theme is 10 lines of CSS.
Comment linking /
on “Add dark mode to your sites, or at least let the browsers do it for you”Submitted Another Update on the Bagel Language as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://jrock.us/ https://jgc.org/ http://kaledavis.com/ https://aegir.sexy/ https://www.gwern.net/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/ https://danwin.com/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/ https://www.magic.do/ https://edweissman.com/ https://jakeseliger.com/ http://www.fogus.me/ https://www.stavros.io/ https://jasonlefkowitz.net/ https://minimaxir.com/ https://www.robinwhittleton.com/ https://ciexinc.com/ https://rongarret.info…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite personal sites?”Submitted Bagel Bites: Type Refinement as a story · 2 points
HN discussionRelated: "Write libraries, not frameworks," which goes more into depth about how frameworks establish precisely such a "seam" and the responsibilities it entails. https://www.brandons.me/blog/libraries-not-frameworks
Comment linking /blog/libraries-not-frameworks
on “Factory Factory Factory”Submitted Grasping React Hooks as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
