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Ckwop's Journal
Personal blog · ckwop.me.ukprogrammingphilosophy
Ckwop's Journal is a personal blog at ckwop.me.uk about programming and philosophy. Since 2008, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times, most often “Meditation Driven Development (2009)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite Ckwop's Journal posts on programming styles, immutability in functional programming, and why exceptions suck when discussing those topics. The comments mostly cite or link the posts without judging them.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Meditation Driven Development (2009)4 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2009-03-08
- Why Exceptions Suck2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-07-01
What Hacker News says?
The best parable of this I've seen was "Meditation Driven Development": http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Meditation-driven-development.html
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)”Submitted Meditation Driven Development (2009) as a story · 58 points
HN discussionI have seen exactly this style of thinking happen in a large code base. Some of it was my own, sadly. The odd thing to me, is you say this still of problem doesn't happen in a large code base. But, to me, this style of problem just happens many times in a large codebase. That is, large problems are just made up of smaller problems. Have I ever used the DLX problem? No. Do I appreciate that it is a good way to look a…
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “Stanford study shows success of different programming styles in CS class”Submitted Why Exceptions Suck as a story · 21 points
HN discussionThis parable bears repeating: http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Meditation-driven-development.html
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “What is Programmer Anarchy and does it have a future?”Submitted Meditation Driven Development as a story · 4 points
HN discussionA relevant parable is "Meditation Driven Development": http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Meditation-driven-development.html
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining”Submitted Meditation-driven development, or, a parable of new software methodologies as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTime blow the dust off my favourite software-industry parable: http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Meditation-driven-development.html
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “Meditation and Performance”Submitted What is software quality anyway? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYeah, screaming is a touch heavy. I should have just said drop my head in sadness. And that I lost a little more hope from the industry. It is funny that this would lead to meditation, as there is a good parable that seems appropriate here.[1] Not all fads are processes, and I'm sure there is a "truly immutable patterns don't have this problem" hiding somewhere. [1] http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Meditation-driven-developme…
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “Why care about functional programming? Part 1: Immutability”http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_T... http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Why-Exceptions-Suck.html Not saying that this is the last word on exceptions, but these are the arguments.
Comment linking /Why-Exceptions-Suck.html
on “Exceptions for control flow considered perfectly acceptable”> It's a meta-process. I was told this early in my time in Labs: "Pivotal is a meta-process shop". My version is: "Pivotal Labs is a debating society which produces code as a by-product". It works. We spend a lot of time reflecting and overall, we keep improving. It's the first place I've worked at where I can see continuous improvement occurring. Not the slogans about improvement, not the Department of the Bureau o…
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “In praise of SWARMing”The relevant parable: http://www.ckwop.me.uk/Meditation-driven-development.html Looking at the Slashdot, there's a lot of No True Scotsman remarks turning up. Saying whether agile "succeeded" or "failed" requires a number of things. You need to define "agile" (good luck) and then define success or failure (good luck). Then you need survey respondents who can answer those questions accurately (good luck) and honestly…
Comment linking /Meditation-driven-development.html
on “Analyst calls agile a scam”
