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explog.in
Personal blog · explog.in · on HN as cynik_programmingai
explog.in is a personal blog at explog.in about programming and ai. Since 2011, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 38 times, most often “Building Developer Tools”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link explog.in for a notes page on debugging and for the author's setup for building a static site with Emacs org-mode and org-publish. The comments only point to pages and do not judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Building Developer Tools2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-06-24
- Approaching Debugging2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-04
- Always Include Units2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-24
- /config.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-07-25
- A Simple Neural Network (2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-20
What Hacker News says?
I wrote about this a long time ago too: https://explog.in/notes/units.html . Units are critical, particularly when crossing language/engineer boundaries.
Comment linking /notes/units.html
on “Please put units in names”Submitted DevTools Leverage as a story · 39 points
HN discussionI've been maintaining a list of books I've read over the past years at https://explog.in/books/list.html; some that come to mind – 1. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett (this might actually be more than 10 years ago, but I'll still list it) I really like this one because it emphasizes the value of caring about the _core_ of anything instead of the _trappings_ that will spring up around it. Keeping this book in mind reminds…
Comment linking /books/list.html;
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?”Submitted A Simple Neural Network ( as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://explog.in -- a few posts over the past decade. I've tried to keep it fairly simple and straightforward. Generated with emacs running in a Github action ( https://explog.in/config.html); comes with a slipbox ( https://explog.in/slipbox/index.html ) that I fill in using LogSeq and export to a flat website using emacs again.
Comment linking /slipbox/index.html
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Building Developer Tools as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI wrote a fairly similar take on this a few years ago (without having read the original book mentioned here) -- https://explog.in/notes/debugging.html Julia Evans also has a very nice zine on debugging: https://wizardzines.com/zines/debugging-guide/
Comment linking /notes/debugging.html
on “Debugging: Indispensable rules for finding even the most elusive problems (2004)”Submitted Always Include Units as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMy attempt at hammering the xkcd servers -- also colours missing tiles correctly (black/white depending on south/north): http://explog.in/xkcd.html [edit: basically lays everything out in a single huge page so that you can scroll instead of dragging]
Comment linking /xkcd.html
on “Xkcd: Click and Drag”Submitted Eating Elephants: ramping up on large software projects as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI just use emacs + org mode -> org-publish to generate my site [1] from org-mode with some customizations; it's been the most flexible and fun way to build a site I've had across all my attempts so far, particularly given that I can go meta and also publish the htmlized raw org files at the same time [2]. [1] Publishing config: http://explog.in/config.html [2] Org Source: http://explog.in/config.org.html
Comment linking /config.org.html
on “Static Website Generators”Submitted Building Developer Tools as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI started writing daily: exploring different things, but particularly asyncio and event loops. Also built a small library to visualize python code execution (to be open sourced soon). https://explog.in/notes/100days.html#org0b7f5fd
Comment linking /notes/100days.html
on “Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?”Submitted Approaching Debugging as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI tried to do a 100 days of writing a few months into the pandemic for exactly the same reason (petered out around ~90 days in, but now I write without tracking religiously) -- https://explog.in/notes/100days.html . It was definitely worth it in terms of making writing easier, and also in helping me get better at thinking through writing. Now trying to make it a permanent daily habit.
Comment linking /notes/100days.html
on “To write better, develop a habit of writing”Submitted A Simple Neural Network (200 loc, rust) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNot the latest one just yet, I still want to play with it a lot more / bake in some more features -- but it's also terribly simple and doesn't do much at the moment. The org mode one is at https://explog.in/config.html .
Comment linking /config.html
on “Static sites with Python, uv, Caddy, and Docker”Submitted Approaching Debugging as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI haven't yet cleaned up the slipbox code enough to publish it, but I do have my site generation code public: https://explog.in/config.html -- which does something similar but doesn't generate the cross links. The slipbox code is just a bunch of python to pre-process the org files and "fix" links, which then passes them on to emacs subprocesses to generate html.
Comment linking /config.html
on “Ask HN: What is a sustainable methodology for taking notes of your learning?”Submitted Always Include Units as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI use logseq to take study notes in org mode, which are then published to my public slipbox by post-processing with emacs in a github action. The consistent part of this has been plain text notes -- the slipbox has stuck for the past year, and hopefully will continue. https://explog.in/slipbox/
Comment linking /slipbox/
on “Ask HN: What is a sustainable methodology for taking notes of your learning?”Submitted Mechanical Tactics for ramping up on large software projects as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://knlb.dev -- new digital garden; https://explog.in -- previous blog, leaving it as is for now though I expect I'll slowly absorb it into the garden.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?”Submitted How I Build Developer Tools as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://explog.in I've been writing here sporadically for more than 10 years at this point, at ~1 post a year. The more recent posts took months to write, and tend to cover things I find myself repeating frequently while working with other engineers. - https://explog.in/notes/elephants/index.html : Tips for ramping up on large projects - https://explog.in/notes/devtools/index.html : Building developer tools Planning…
Comment linking /notes/devtools/index.html
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Panopticon – A Python Tracer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionA small chrome extension I've written by digging through the way facebook loads ticker updates: lets you check the feed without having to visit facebook. All completed in 24 hours -- started by learning how to write a chrome extension, pretty printing and reading fb javascript, lots of hit and trials to find out what worked and what didn't -- and finally releasing it on the app store. Slightly better screenshot here…
Comment linking /blog/2011/09/22/Chromicker/
on “Show HN: Chrome extension to put ticker into a popup”Submitted My [Emacs] Writing Setup as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI used this in AoC for the first time a couple of years ago, as a consequence of diving deeply into asyncio. https://explog.in/static/aoc2019/AoC23.html
Comment linking /static/aoc2019/AoC23.html
on “A crash course in Python “comprehensions” and “generators””Submitted The unreasonable effectiveness of sys.settrace (and sys.setprofile) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion