Top all-time · #3982
Burak Kanber
Personal blog · burakkanber.com/blog · on HN as bkanberprogrammingphilosophycareer
Burak Kanber's personal blog at burakkanber.com covers programming, philosophy and career. Since 2012, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “Machine Learning: Full-Text Search in JavaScript – Relevance Scoring (2015)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-01-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Burak Kanber's JavaScript tutorials and project write-ups, such as a KNN intro, a physics modelling post and the SiteChat postmortem, which commenters call fun to read and a great post.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Author, tech CTO, engineer, and some other things too.
Most-linked posts?
- Machine Learning: Full-Text Search in JavaScript – Relevance Scoring (2015)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-03-22
- SiteChat: a postmortem. Or, the rise and fall of a society.2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-10-20
- Learning the k-means Clustering Algorithm in Javascript2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-10-15
- Introduction to k-nearest-neighbor (ML in Javascript series)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-07
- A Caution Against Microservices2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-04-30
- Machine Learning in JavaScript2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-30
- Don't Overinvest in Engineering2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-03
- Learn to Embrace Dinkiness2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-02-24
- Modeling physics in javascript: gravity and drag2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-06
What Hacker News says?
(First, you should know I'm playing devil's advocate. I run a startup, and of course I agree with you about sales and marketing. See [1] for my thoughts on this) > That a business is run by one person is irrelevant. I disagree with you here. In your system, there is a binary designation for individuals: either you are an individual employee, you have given up a large part of your freedom in exchange for the security…
Comment linking /blog/startup-advice-dont-overinvest-in-engineering/
on “Freelancer.com has ruined my life”- xd · 2014-01-30
Submitted Machine Learning in JavaScript as a story · 169 points
HN discussion If tilde club someday dies, either by crushing-traffic, hackers, negligence, commercialization, or acquihire, I'm hoping we get a post-mortem that was as fun to read as this origin story. I would love to even just see more machine configuration details for the "one cheap, unmodified Unix computer on the Internet" that is hosting it. Reading this post about someone building a community just out of a whim, and then se…
Comment linking /blog/sitechat-a-postmortem-or-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-society/
on “Tilde.Club: I had a couple drinks and woke up with 1,000 nerds”Submitted Machine Learning: Full-Text Search in JavaScript – Relevance Scoring (2015) as a story · 153 points
HN discussionI experienced the same issue when I was in college. I discovered that the way to learn for me was to find a niche category of projects and do them on my own. I actually wrote a blog post about it a while back: https://burakkanber.com/blog/how-i-taught-myself-electronics...
Comment linking /blog/how-i-taught-myself-electronics/
on “Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn how electricity works?”Submitted SiteChat: a postmortem. Or, the rise and fall of a society. as a story · 120 points
HN discussionI have a slightly older article series on Machine Learning in Javascript, teaching algorithms assuming only JS knowledge: https://www.burakkanber.com/tag/ml-in-js/
Comment linking /tag/ml-in-js/
on “Ask HN: How can a front-end developer dive into machine learning?”Submitted Introduction to genetic algorithms (example in Javascript) as a story · 118 points
HN discussionI wrote an article very similar to this a few months ago. I make a similar argument: we need defined workspaces, and when we're there we shouldn't do anything but work. http://burakkanber.com/blog/staying-productive-while-working...
Comment linking /blog/staying-productive-while-working-from-home-or-why-we-need-workspaces/
on “Things I've quit doing at my desk”Submitted Modeling Physics in Javascript: Gravity and Drag as a story · 91 points
HN discussionI wrote a JS implementation and tutorial on k-means a few years back [1], if anyone is looking for this in the browser. Great writeup, I appreciate the math focus! [1] http://burakkanber.com/blog/machine-learning-k-means-cluster...
Comment linking /blog/machine-learning-k-means-clustering-in-javascript-part-1/
on “Introduction to K-means Clustering”Submitted Full-Text Search in JavaScript as a story · 87 points
HN discussionI recently went through the HN posts I upvoted/saved this year and maybe someday will get around summarizing the ones that taught/inspired me the most...here are two technical ones that stuck out for me: SiteChat: a postmortem. Or, the rise and fall of a society. http://burakkanber.com/blog/sitechat-a-postmortem-or-the-ris... This to me was the epitome of a great HN post: the author decides he wants to learn how to…
Comment linking /blog/sitechat-a-postmortem-or-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-society/
on “The best things and stuff of 2012”Submitted Intro to Genetic Algorithms in Javascript Part 2 as a story · 85 points
HN discussionAwesome! I couple years ago I made a simple game that uses orbital mechanics too: http://burakkanber.com/orbit If it will help at all feel free to poke through the source code!
Comment linking /orbit
on “Modeling Physics in Javascript: Gravity and Drag”Submitted Why I'm Learning Morse Code as a story · 77 points
HN discussionhttp://burakkanber.com/blog/ I've recently started a Physics in JS and a ML in JS series. Hope you like it!
Comment linking /blog/
on “OCR and Neural Nets in JavaScript”Submitted Bash Scripting: Why didn't I start this earlier? as a story · 50 points
HN discussionTidal's dev team loves working from home! I agree that "work is modal" -- I even wrote a [post]( http://burakkanber.com/blog/staying-productive-while-working... ) at one point about it, and how important maintaining a workspace is. We've also started using a version of the pomodoro technique. We take :55 - :05 of the hour off to do whatever (check emails, talk to each other, eat a sandwich, workout, etc), but what h…
Comment linking /blog/staying-productive-while-working-from-home-or-why-we-need-workspaces/
on “Why I Decided to Spend More Time Working from Home”Submitted Do we have a moral obligation to society? as a story · 43 points
HN discussionI wrote a tutorial on solving the knapsack problem with genetic algorithms in javascript a while back: http://burakkanber.com/blog/machine-learning-genetic-algorit... There are better ways to solve this problem, of course, but the primary goal was to talk about GAs, not to solve the knapsack problem in the most efficient manner.
Comment linking /blog/machine-learning-genetic-algorithms-in-javascript-part-2/
on “Knapsack problem”Submitted Learn to Embrace Dinkiness as a story · 42 points
HN discussionhttp://burakkanber.com/blog/modeling-physics-javascript-grav... http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/a-visual-explanatio... or, take your pick http://pineapple.io/?type=tutorials&sort=all_time
Comment linking /blog/modeling-physics-javascript-gravity-and-drag/
on “Ask HN: Any cool tutorials you can recommend?”Submitted Modeling a car suspension in Javascript, part 1 as a story · 40 points
HN discussionI came across this algorithm today doing research on how to categorize our users based on attributes (or in KNN terminology "features") and activity and then allocate resources accordingly. Heres another nice little intro tutorial showing how an implementation in JS for those interested, http://burakkanber.com/blog/machine-learning-in-js-k-nearest... I was surprised at the elegant simplicity of this, if anyone has o…
Comment linking /blog/machine-learning-in-js-k-nearest-neighbor-part-1/
on “Introduction to K Nearest Neighbor Algorithm”Submitted Modeling a pendulum clock in Javascript as a story · 26 points
HN discussionSubmitted Full-Text Search in Javascript – Part 1: Relevance Scoring as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted Learning the k-means Clustering Algorithm in Javascript as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Fun Debugging Story as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Machine Learning using JavaScript as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
