Top all-time · #2868
Code Simplicity
Personal blog · codesimplicity.com · on HN as mkanatprogrammingcareer
Code Simplicity is a personal blog at codesimplicity.com about programming and career. Since 2008, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times, most often “The Fundamental Philosophy of Debugging”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- The Fundamental Philosophy of Debugging3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-07-18
- Fast Programming: Stop Thinking2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-05-21
- Code Simplicity: the Laws of Software Design2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-04-10
- Growing and maintaining an opensource community2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-02
- How to Be a Great Programmer: Awareness, Understanding, and Responsibility2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-02-01
- /post/measuring-developer-productivity/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-04-09
- The Singular Secret of the Rockstar Programmer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-11-10
What Hacker News says?
http://codesimplicity.com/ for fundamentals of software design and improving code bases
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you follow?”Submitted Effective Engineering Productivity as a story · 92 points
HN discussionSee https://www.codesimplicity.com/post/the-accuracy-of-future-p... for some thoughts on the accuracy of future predictions. I've found Max Kanat-Alexander's writings on software to be very workable; I've had many successes applying them.
Comment linking /post/the-accuracy-of-future-predictions/
on “Ask HN: How to avoid over-engineering software design for future use cases?”Submitted Readability and Naming Things as a story · 52 points
HN discussionYou may get some inspiration from https://www.codesimplicity.com/post/how-to-handle-code-compl... Excerpt: > It’s very tempting, if you’re a software engineering manager, to propose broad, sweeping solutions to problems that affect large areas. ... > > So what can you do as a manager...? Well, the trick is to get the data from the individual contributors and then work with them to help them resolve the issues.
Comment linking /post/how-to-handle-code-complexity/
on “Ask HN: Going to lead a struggling dev team in a different culture, now what?”Submitted Code Simplicity: The Fundamentals of Software as a story · 25 points
HN discussionSort of, yeah. See https://testing.googleblog.com/2017/04/code-health-googles-i... as one of the examples of a type of Engineering Productivity work that I do at Google (although as you have basically pointed out, there are reasons we avoided that word for the work that I do, although I still think it falls under the broader umbrella). It seems like the thing that you're worried about (I mean, correct me if I'm wron…
Comment linking /book/
on “Effective Engineering Productivity”Submitted The Secret of Success: Suck Less as a story · 11 points
HN discussionYes, but the post is about a group of people or an individual who works in a particular field, not the subject of productivity itself. So I defined the phrase as used in the post. I do have another post about measuring productivity: http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/measuring-developer-produ...
Comment linking /post/measuring-developer-productivity/
on “Effective Engineering Productivity”Submitted The Secret of Success: Suck Less as a story · 8 points
HN discussionYou are welcome!! The author also blogs at https://www.codesimplicity.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is the best programming book you've read?”Submitted The Fundamental Philosophy of Debugging as a story · 5 points
HN discussion"Understanding Software" by Max Kanat-Alexander Book review: https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/10/understanding-software-re... Release announcement: https://www.codesimplicity.com/post/understanding-software/
Comment linking /post/understanding-software/
on “Ask HN: What are the best programming books you could read in a weekend?”Submitted Growing and maintaining an opensource community as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCheck out recent discussion of Max Kanat-Alexander's blog post on increasing developer productivity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14071716 (and of course the blog post itself, http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/effective-engineering-pro... ) P.S. See also Max's earlier blog post Measuring Developer Productivity: http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/measuring-developer-produ...
Comment linking /post/measuring-developer-productivity/
on “Ask HN: Productivity tips/sources/literature?”Submitted Fast Programming: Stop Thinking as a story · 3 points
HN discussion“The Primary Law of Software Design” is relevant here. https://www.codesimplicity.com/post/the-primary-law-of-softw...
Comment linking /post/the-primary-law-of-software-design/
on “Ask HN: What Are the Laws of Software?”Submitted The Definition of Simplicity as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Fundamental Philosophy of Debugging as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Refactoring is About Features as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Singular Secret of the Rockstar Programmer as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Is Overengineering? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Top Reasons To Work On Open Source as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Makes a Great Developer Experience? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Success: Suck Less (2009) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fast Programmers don't think as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Be a Great Programmer: Awareness, Understanding, and Responsibility as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Kindness and Code as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Code Simplicity: the Laws of Software Design as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Max from Bugzilla reflects on keeping an open source community healthy as a story · 2 points
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