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curtclifton.net
Personal blog · curtclifton.netprogrammingdesign
curtclifton.net is a personal blog at curtclifton.net about programming and design. Since 2012, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 53 times, most often “Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf]”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf]25 people · 35 mentions · first linked 2012-10-02
- Out of the Tar Pit [pdf]12 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2022-12-22
What Hacker News says?
> Types of cognitive load - Extrinsic/Intrinsic This neatly mirrors the central ideas presented in Out of the Tar Pit [0], which defines accidental and essential complexity. Reading this paper was probably one of the biggest career unlocks for me. You really can win ~the entire game if you stay focused on the schema and keep in touch with the customer often enough to ensure that it makes sense to them over time. OOT…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Cognitive load is what matters”Submitted App Developers on Swift Evolution as a story · 83 points
HN discussionRelying primarily on relational modeling reminds me of Out of the Tar Pit[0]. The well known paper suggests a combination of functional programming and relational data modeling. [0] http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Write code. Not too much. Mostly functions.”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit [pdf] as a story · 19 points
HN discussionPaper link: http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Papers every developer should read at least twice (2009)”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCame here to add Out of the Tar Pit. Here’s my clipboard: http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Papers every developer should read at least twice (2009)”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit, 2006 [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> You're mixing together useful complexity with useless complexity. > Complexity has high costs Complexity management is the central theme of building any large, valuable system. We would probably find that the more complex (and correct) a system, the more valuable it becomes on a relative basis to other competing solutions. The US tax code is a pretty damn good example of complexity intentionally taken to the extre…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Kubernetes is our generation's Multics”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Wouldn't it be great if the man page of getaddrinfo mentioned those (mine only mentions gai.conf) That's a huge part of the problem. Was looking for a monograph to pass on my successor that wasn't so familiar with linux - modern linux - as in systemd, docker, nssswitch, pam_homed, network-manager is penetrable but more often than not I'm just looking at the c source in github and I am in my 30ies, starting in my t…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “SELinux is unmanageable; just turn it off if it gets in your way”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've never understood why people like this paper. Over the years I've evolved a bite-sized rebuttal, if anybody wants to fight me: The authors' "ideal world" is one where computation has no cost, but social structures remain unchanged, with "users" having "requirements". But the users are all mathematical enough to want formal requirements. The authors don’t seem to notice that the arrow in "Informal requirements ->…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Essays on programming I think about a lot”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFP is only part of the equation when working with meaningfully-complex systems. Having a clear data + relational model is the other big part. I would strongly recommend reviewing the functional-relational programming model described in this paper - http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf The overall theme goes something like: FP is for handling all your logic, and RP is for arranging all of your data. Some…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “What’s so great about functional programming anyway?”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionArt of the propagator It is like a discovering a new programming paradigm. Something new and different, not a Lisp, not a Datalog, weirdly distributed, with interesting properties, but powerful. There are adjacent things, BLOOM project and Eve language seems to have discovered something simmilar, and Edward Kmett working on his new language is using propagators quite heavily. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/755c/48…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Six works of Computer Science-Fiction (2015)”Submitted Common Causes of Complexity in Software [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'd strongly recommend checking this paper out: Out of the Tar Pit - http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf I agree that functional programming is part of the future. I believe that the relational model is the other part. In this space, imperative programming exists primarily to bootstrap a given FRP domain. We've built a functional-relational programming approach on top of SQLite using this paper as insp…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Functional programming should be the future of software”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere are many sources of complexity, and avoiding it is the hardest problem in software engineering. I recommend the first half of the Out Of The Tarpit paper. https://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> A full definition of "simplicity", as with "complexity", lies somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps "somewhat", but not entirely or arguably even mostly: http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Simple Systems Have Less Downtime (2020)”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> accidental and essential complexity I feel like I am turning into a bot for posting the Out of the Tar Pit paper: http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf This changed my understanding of computer science and our product virtually overnight. We are using a hybrid model of Functional Relational Programming (see section 9 in the paper). This is in production right now and its clearly the right answer for ma…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Simple Systems Have Less Downtime (2020)”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionClojureScript is awesome. There are several tools available for live-coding (REPL-driven development) such as more recent shadowcljs or the older Figwheel. Rum is a powerful wrapper over React.js and you can live code and see instantaneous results in the browser (using shadowcljs or figwheel). ClojureScript's strengths largely stem from Clojure -- collections as fundamental types, REPL, macros, immutable datastructu…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “Tetris in ClojureScript”Submitted Out of the Tar Pit (2006) [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCool. I've noticed that general program complexity seems to be a topic that everyone acknowledges, but nobody tries to frame objectively. Except for a few people at the fringes. I'm not sure that I understand and/or agree with this link. However, I've written and talked about this topic in the past and the response that I've gotten is usually some variation of, "Cool, but I'm not sure that I get it." It feels kind o…
Comment linking /papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
on “I hate almost all software (2011)”A long, but thoroughly worthwhile read on this topic is Out of the Tar Pit [1]. [1]: http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
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on “I hate almost all software (2011)”
