Top all-time · #5545
DaFoster
Personal blog · dafoster.net/articlesprogramming
DaFoster is a personal blog at dafoster.net about programming. Since 2013, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “Building Web Apps with Vue and Django – The Ultimate Guide”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The DaFoster blog covers programming topics such as Haskell, dependent types in Idris, Scala, semantic versioning, and privacy in ad tech. HN readers link its posts as sources in discussions of typing and tooling.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Building Web Apps with Vue and Django – The Ultimate Guide2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-17
- /articles/2015/02/27/proof-terms-in-idris/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-16
- Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-04-29
- I no longer trust The Great Suspender2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-20
What Hacker News says?
Adblock Plus takes bribes to unblock ads: https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads Great suspender contains malware: https://dafoster.net/articles/2021/01/20/i-no-longer-trust-t... LastPass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LastPass#Security_issues
Comment linking /articles/2021/01/20/i-no-longer-trust-the-great-suspender/
on “Still alive”Submitted I no longer trust The Great Suspender as a story · 889 points
HN discussionI actually like the idea of Privacy Sandbox. It appears to enable sites which depend on ad revenue to continue to exist while seeking to eliminate the usual problem with current adtech: third party tracking. I wrote up a more nuanced version of this opinion here: * Privacy Sandbox: Google's answer to privacy-conscious advertising -- https://dafoster.net/articles/2021/02/04/privacy-sandbox-goo...
Comment linking /articles/2021/02/04/privacy-sandbox-googles-answer-to-privacy-conscious-advertising/
on “Google’s approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny”Submitted Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018) as a story · 167 points
HN discussion> ML-family and Haskell are popular where provable correctness is wanted. Haskell doesn't have a theorem prover, you may want to check out Idris [1]. Haskell gives you more safety that you aren't going to get run time errors than say Java, but not completely. You'll still need automated testing for correctness, that you're not getting garbage in, garbage out. [1] http://dafoster.net/articles/2015/02/27/proof-terms-i…
Comment linking /articles/2015/02/27/proof-terms-in-idris/
on “Becoming Productive in Haskell”Submitted Python's Type Checking Renaissance as a story · 150 points
HN discussionThe author argues that dynamic languages like (JavaScript, Python) have Poor IDE and Tooling Support and are Unmanageable in large programs. I'll counter that if you add a type checker to one of these languages, such as TypeScript (for JavaScript) or mypy (for Python), then all of those problems go away. I'm personally particularly excited about the possibilities unlocked in the Python community by type checking, wh…
Comment linking /articles/2021/01/26/python%27s-type-checking-renaissance/
on “From First Principles: Why Scala?”Submitted Designing Software in the Large as a story · 96 points
HN discussionAnd in this conversation lies a great example of why semantic versioning != romantic versioning. Good read: http://dafoster.net/articles/2015/03/14/semantic-versioning-...
Comment linking /articles/2015/03/14/semantic-versioning-vs-romantic-versioning/
on “Opus 1.3 Released”Submitted OS Abstractions Are Failing Us as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHow are you finding Idris? or are you more in the Agda camp? If you want to definitely rule out as many errors as possible, dependently typed languages are the state of the art, allowing you to write a sort function that will fail to compile if it returns a list that isn't sorted (eg, https://dafoster.net/articles/2015/02/27/proof-terms-in-idri... , or https://www.twanvl.nl/blog/agda/sorting ). After all, if you can…
Comment linking /articles/2015/02/27/proof-terms-in-idris/
on “Trying Out Generics in Go”Submitted Killer apps for software platforms as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThanks for the thought! I haven't tried it, but this post [1] describes a project that got everything to work with the Mac App Store. [1] http://dafoster.net/articles/2014/06/24/submitting-a-python-...
Comment linking /articles/2014/06/24/submitting-a-python-app-to-the-mac-app-store/
on “Creating standalone Mac OS X applications with Python and py2app”Submitted Issue counts always go up as a story · 2 points
HN discussion>You literally had a bug in your code that would have been caught with testing, and it did not have to do with the logic but with input sanitization, which has to do with your integration with what the framework provided you. No this bug wouldn't have been caught. I'd have to write the test for it. I did do integration tests. I just did them manually. If I wrote all the manual tests and made them automated this "err…
Comment linking /articles/2015/02/27/proof-terms-in-idris/
on “Ask HN: I have 10 yrs of Exp. Failed 4 takehome projects. What am I doing wrong?”Submitted Building Web Apps with Vue and Django – The Ultimate Guide as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Privacy Sandbox: Google's answer to privacy-conscious advertising as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Programmer's Guide to Practical Hats (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode? (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Oops, I Wrote a Database as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Redis relicensing: Why is this a problem? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: Crystal Web Archiver – a website downloader as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted You might not need centralized continuous integration as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Things I Wish I Knew Before Working in Industry as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Things I Wish I Knew Before Working in Industry (2021) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building Web Apps with Vue and Django – The Ultimate Guide as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tests as Policy Automation as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Handling Text Correctly as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Proof terms in Idris as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Visual guide to programming language properties as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
