Top all-time · #7783
Zach Tellman
Personal blog · explaining.software/archiveprogrammingdesign
Zach Tellman writes Explaining Software Design, a personal blog at explaining.software about programming and design. Since 2024, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 34 times, most often “Transparent Like Frosted Glass”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-03-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Zach Tellman's newsletter on software design, which covers how software is understood and built. Commenters cite its essays on design as knowledge-building, user empowerment in computing, and the Sudoku and TDD analogy.
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.
by Zach Tellman For the past few years, I've been working on a book about software design. Its thesis is fairly simple: Software development can be reduced to a single, iterative action. Almost everything we do in the course of a day — the pull requests, the meetings, the whiteboard diagrams, the
Most-linked posts?
- Transparent Like Frosted Glass3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-09-18
- The Death of the Architect3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-10-30
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-01-01
- Decoupling in Depth2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-02
- The Sudoku Affair2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-02-05
- The Simplicity of a Fractal2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-10
- Similar, but Different2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-25
- The Simplicity of a Limb2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-10
- State and Trace2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-15
What Hacker News says?
This is a well-referenced essay, drawing the on writing of David Parnas [1], Peter Naur [2], and Zach Tellman [3]. As software developers we’re intimately familiar with these ideas. But the industry still treats it as “folk knowledge”, despite decades of academic work and systemization attempts like the original Agile. We really need more connective work, relating the theoretical ideas to the observed behavior of re…
Comment linking /
on “Software Design Is Knowledge Building”Submitted The Sudoku Affair as a story · 153 points
HN discussionI find this article spot on and resonates with what I've experienced. The article mentions Zach Tellman's newsletter "Explaining Software Design" ( https://explaining.software/ ) which I highly recommend reading. I have found his works to provide deep insight into the process of software design.
Comment linking /
on “Software Design Is Knowledge Building”Submitted Transparent Like Frosted Glass as a story · 40 points
HN discussion> I've been feeling lately that as computers have become more advanced and software has become more inscrutable, our relationship with our computers has changed, for the worse. Very much so. Technology stopped being about empowerment some time ago - it's been subverted into a tool for erecting virtual tollbooths. > This essay hit home for me: https://explaining.software/archive/transparent-like-frosted ... Thanks fo…
Comment linking /archive/transparent-like-frosted
on “My MEGA65 is finally here”Submitted The Death of the Architect as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI love this project. I've been feeling lately that as computers have become more advanced and software has become more inscrutable, our relationship with our computers has changed, for the worse. This essay hit home for me: https://explaining.software/archive/transparent-like-frosted... These old-school computers viewed their users as creators, as developers. Modern computers (read: smartphones) _are_ the users, and…
Comment linking /archive/transparent-like-frosted-glass/
on “My MEGA65 is finally here”Submitted Decoupling in Depth as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://explaining.software/ https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite blog in 2024?”Submitted Senior Developer Agents as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis was an interesting read but the source article is fascinating https://explaining.software/archive/the-sudoku-affair/ TDD as an incremental search from a simple start point towards a solutions. Put in those terms, it'll work when the path from start to solution is smoothly differentiable.
Comment linking /archive/the-sudoku-affair/
on “Reflections on Sudoku, or the Impossibility of Systematizing Thought”Submitted The Death of the Architect as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Death of the Architect as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Intent and Implication as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Structures as Paths as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Similar, but Different as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Simplicity of a Fractal as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Better Explanations Through Coupling as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Complexity as Entropy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Structuralism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making things better as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Decoupling in Depth as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Similar, but Different as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Transparent Like Frosted Glass as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Limb-Metaphor for Simplicity as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Anatomy of an Explanation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Explaining Software Design: A Brief Introduction as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted State and Trace as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted State and Trace as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Senior Developer Agents as a story · 1 points
HN discussion