Top all-time · #11074
Dorian Taylor
Personal blog · dorian.substack.com · on HN as dorianpoliticsphilosophyprogramming
Dorian Taylor writes The Making of Making Sense, a personal blog at dorian.substack.com about politics, philosophy and programming. Since 2022, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Dorian Taylor's Substack for essays on Christopher Alexander's work, including an overview of his life and ideas, and personal pieces on meaningful days and ungrowth at work.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This is a semi-contemporaneous newsletter where I will be cataloguing the things that happen in the world that get me thinking about the things that become more durable projects.
Most-linked posts?
- /p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-04-05
What Hacker News says?
I've done a lot of service jobs, and commercial construction jobs, and have a deep appreciation for a clean and well-organized space. I love to sweep. If I could get paid as a SWE to just speak and "garden" our office, to make it a more pleasent environment, conducive to peaceful thought and pleasent interactions, I'd take that job in a heartbeat. Christopher Alexander is a bit of a god-father of object-oriented pro…
Comment linking /p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process
on “Tell HN: Beware 'Ungrowth' in Your Job”Submitted Radical Interoperability Is a Political Agenda as a story · 33 points
HN discussionAddendum: He also has a good retrospective or précis (medium-length expository summary) on Christopher Alexander, how his views changed, and his work, here: https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-proce...
Comment linking /p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process
on “A Pattern Language”Submitted Privacy by Design as a story · 1 points
HN discussionChristopher Alexander passed away a few weeks ago on March, 17 2022. If you're looking to read more about his life's work I recommend this overview https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-proce... One way of understanding Alexander's life and work is that he asked a few important and simple questions, and went through many investigations through research and practice to develop different perspectives…
Comment linking /p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process
on “Nature Unfolding”https://dorian.substack.com/p/radical-interoperability-is-a-...
Comment linking /p/radical-interoperability-is-a-political/comments?s=w
on “Radical Interoperability Is a Political Agenda”I think I agree..! I get the sense you were feeling at odds with my framing? I wonder if it's that you're picking up that I believe "structure" is above any one person or set of people. In my conception, leadership is just part of structure, a key maintainer. Leadership are pieces of the structure, but subordinate in scale. They sometimes seek outside help in shaping structure (e.g., ppl like eries), and the structu…
Comment linking /p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process
on “AMA: I'm Eric Ries (The Lean Startup) & Author of New Bestseller Incorruptible”I actually loved this, and felt moved. While reading, my mind fired rapidly through dozens of personal memes (i.e. my regularly trod thought-paths) that I keep in my knowledge-base. This is the 30mb text corpus where I log all my work and peer conversations and thoughts, and (amongst other things) where I think through what I would consider my spiritual practices... my sensemaking around complex systems, including D…
Comment linking /p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process
on “Why meaningful days look like nothing while you are living them”This post by Dorian Taylor on Christopher Alexander is a good introduction I found https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-proce...
Comment linking /p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process
on “Beautiful Software: Christopher Alexander's research initiative on computing”
