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Colin M. Strickland

Personal blog · beatworm.co.uk/blog · on HN as colinstricklandprogrammingculture

Colin M. Strickland's personal blog at beatworm.co.uk covers programming and culture. Since 2017, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times, most often “How I built the IMDb message boards, in 2001”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-03, and you can follow it by feed.

Visit the blog
12mentions?
12HN people?
2017–2025first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 6 in 2017

Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?

Why HN links it

Linked in a thread on how Reddit built r/Place, with a list of other large-scale engineering write-ups from Twitter, Reddit, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn and Netlify about their infrastructure.

Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.

Colin Strickland cms home page Colin M. Strickland

The author on HN?

colinstrickland · 106 karma · member since 2010

Older British internet dude. I like databases, UNIX, Macs and emacs. Ex Amazon/IMDb, ex last.fm, ex Wonderbly, ex Platform.sh. [ my public key: https://keybase.io/cms; my proof: https://keybase.io/cms/sigs/gs7NqOd5pA4wNJQxC-DLjVRCTIsQT0KsAP87Tzr3x1I ] https://www.beatworm.co.uk https://fed.beatworm.co.uk/@cms

From their public HN profile, which links to this site.

Most-linked posts?

  1. How I built the IMDb message boards, in 2001
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-02-06
  2. The IMDB Boards Are No More – A Eulogy
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-06
  3. Perl's decline was cultural
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-20

What Hacker News says?

  1. petercooper · 2017-04-13
    Here are some recent ones that have been popular: http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/4/20/how-twitter-handle... https://redditblog.com/2017/1/17/caching-at-reddit/ https://blog.twitter.com/2017/the-infrastructure-behind-twit... https://www.netlify.com/blog/2017/03/16/smashing-magazine-ju... https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/03/stack-overflow-a-tech... https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/10/instant-messag.…

    Comment linking /blog/internet/imdb-boards-no-more

    on “How We Built r/Place”
  2. todsacerdoti · 2025-12-06

    Submitted Perl's decline was cultural as a story · 395 points

    HN discussion
  3. colinstrickland · 2017-02-06
    I'm one of the original developers and the primary author of the IMDb boards system, started way back in 2001. I wrote up my thoughts here - https://www.beatworm.co.uk/blog/internet/imdb-boards-no-more

    Comment linking /blog/internet/imdb-boards-no-more

    on ““We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards””
  4. yread · 2017-02-07

    Submitted How I built the IMDb message boards, in 2001 as a story · 290 points

    HN discussion
  5. bibyte · 2019-03-17

    Submitted Docker might be eating your batteries? as a story · 69 points

    HN discussion
  6. asimjalis · 2019-03-20

    Submitted Some thoughts on hylang (2017) as a story · 45 points

    HN discussion
  7. gerikson · 2025-11-20

    Submitted Perl's Decline Was Cultural as a story · 11 points

    HN discussion
  8. telotortium · 2017-02-06

    Submitted IMDB Boards No More as a story · 7 points

    HN discussion
  9. based2 · 2018-01-01

    Submitted Some thoughts on hylang as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  10. behnamoh · 2022-10-02

    Submitted Some Thoughts on Hylang as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  11. ojosilva · 2017-02-15

    Submitted IMDB Boards No More as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  12. yoodit · 2017-02-06

    Submitted The IMDB Boards Are No More – A Eulogy as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion

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