Top all-time · #7572
Burningbird
Personal blog · burningbird.netwebwriting
Burningbird is a personal blog at burningbird.net about web and writing. Since 2009, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Shelley Powers' personal blog on software, the web and blogging culture. HN readers link posts such as "The parable of the languages" and posts on blogging history and the WinerWatch episode.
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.
What Hacker News says?
Maybe this is just changing fashion, but a lot of developers keep blogs for this reason, and 10 years ago everyone would have simply called this idea a "blog". Among the ones I read: http://intertwingly.net/blog/ https://burningbird.net/ https://kottke.org/ https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ I keep my own blog entirely for my own benefit, and the tech section is simply things I've read recently, or things I've learned r…
Comment linking /
on “The software engineering notebook”Submitted The W3C Bites Back? as a story · 20 points
HN discussionThis made me remember the amazing “parable of the languages” that had XML as the main antagonist of the story. We need an AI update for this one. https://burningbird.net/the-parable-of-the-languages/
Comment linking /the-parable-of-the-languages/
on “Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster (2014)”Submitted Google and the power we give in exchange for security as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhile this might be technically true, my own (anecdotal) experience has been quite different. I've been writing JS since its invention, initially just using it (as a kid) for silly Geocities gimmicks and infinite window.alert() loops. I still remember how back in the day no two browsers had a totally compatible JS implementation (especially when Microsoft was busy trying to embrace-extend-extinguish), some things wo…
Comment linking /netscape-navigators-javascript-1-1-vs-microsoft-internet-explorers-jscript/
on “Missing the Point of WebAssembly”Submitted HTML5 is now at Last Call as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDoes anyone here remember WinerWatch ? The tool Mark Pilgrim wrote, that monitored changes to blog posts by (the notoriously trollish) Dave Winer? It caused a big stir in the blogosphere in 2003, and Mark took it down very quickly after public blowback. I always thought it was pretty cool and he should have left it up. One of the very few surviving posts on the matter: https://burningbird.net/forget-the-law-forget-t…
Comment linking /forget-the-law-forget-the-technology-whats-the-right-thing-to-do/
on “Show HN: Site Spy – Track webpage changes with diffs, element picking, and RSS”Submitted Apple, Opera, and Mozilla: Why are you working against open standards? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted HTML5: a story in progress as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Homogeneity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Provocative Language and the HTML5 Working Group as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
