Top all-time · #16137
Gary Robinson
Personal blog · garyrobinson.net · on HN as garyrobprogrammingaiculture
Gary Robinson's personal blog at garyrobinson.net covers programming, ai and culture. Since 2008, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The one comment does not mention this blog or its writing. It describes a 21-line Python script the commenter wrote in 2008 and still uses, in a thread about the oldest code still in use.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Gary Robinson - Software developer, earliest inventor of tracking cookies, creator of spam filtering mathematics. Virtual Development Corporation.
What Hacker News says?
I wrote a short story based on a similar scenario. (Caveat, I did it with AI help, but my ideas and many iterations and me doing final editing to get it the way I want). https://garyrobinson.net/2026/08/18/everyone-who-will-ever-b...
Comment linking /2026/08/18/everyone-who-will-ever-be-born/
on “Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived”Submitted Git In Two Minutes (updated after 8 years) as a story · 351 points
HN discussionAbout 8 years ago, I blogged a very brief guide to using git for a solo developer. A lot of people seemed to like it. A couple times since then, I've noticed there was something I was using that wasn't in it, but that could be added without making it significantly longer or more complicated. So there were a couple of updates. I did another one today, and had the thought that since this guide now includes the benefit…
Comment linking /2014/10/git-in-two-minutes-for-a-solo-developer.html
on “Git In Two Minutes (updated after 8 years)”Submitted Two-Minute Guide to Git as a story · 87 points
HN discussion"Go out alone if it suits you, don’t expect profound thoughts" Often, I consciously decide to use time along to think. I don't think anything would happen without that conscious decision. But I've gotten some good results from that conscious decision. Once in the '90's I was driving back to my home in Maine from an internet conference in Boston. I had come up with a mathematical technique to recommend things to peop…
Comment linking /2021/07/did-i-invent-browser-cookies-for-advertising.html
on “How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself (2014)”Submitted A Thought on LLMs and Rust as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI haven't stayed at a job for longer than 3 years, and all of them have been internal projects with no external visibility, so I can't really know for sure. I do have a 21-line python script that I still use which I initially committed to github in 2008, so that's certainly a contender (first internship started in fall 2004). The script is an expansion on the web server one-liner: https://github.com/imnotpete/odds-a…
Comment linking /2004/03/one_line_python.html
on “Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?”Submitted I tried to explain NFTs to a non-techie artist I know as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI like Rye but missed virtualenvwrapper's workon. So I made one: https://www.garyrobinson.net/2024/04/bourbon-like-virtualenv...
Comment linking /2024/04/bourbon-like-virtualenvwrappers-workon-but-for-rye.html
on “Trying Out Rye”Submitted 2-week Covid-19 forecast as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://garyrobinson.net
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?”Submitted Everyone Who Will Ever Be Born as a story · 1 points
HN discussion"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." (Quote from computer pioneer Howard Aiken.) If something is truly new, and truly valuable, with an emphasis on "truly" for both parts,it will be different enough that the conventional wisdom will reject it, but it will win in the long tun. That's because it isn't obvious in the current context;…
Comment linking /2021/07/did-i-invent-browser-cookies-for-advertising.html
on “Why Did the Beatles Get So Many Bad Reviews?”Submitted Short Math Joke as a story · 1 points
HN discussionin 1995, I thought that it would be good if advertisements could be served from hubs to large numbers of web sites. That would mean that advertisers wouldn't have to hire ad space salespeople, which was far too expensive for most sites. But then there was the problem of how to decide which ads to show to which visitors to those sites. To do that, it seemed like it would be a good idea to base that decision on the si…
Comment linking /2021/07/did-i-invent-browser-cookies-for-advertising.html
on “Ask HN: Small scripts, hacks and automations you're proud of?”