Top all-time · #3832
Dave Rolsky
Personal blog · blog.urth.org · on HN as autarchprogrammingcareer
Dave Rolsky writes House Absolute(ly Pointless), a personal blog at blog.urth.org about programming and career. Since 2009, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 56 times, most often “Tech Interviewer Theory”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its writing on tech interviewing and hiring, including coding challenges and candidates' open source work. It also gets cited for a Netmask npm vulnerability write-up.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Unsubstantiated Opinions and Meaningless Blather
Most-linked posts?
- Tech Interviewer Theory2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-03-09
- Yet Another GitHub Profile Generator2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-02
- Security Issues in Perl IP Address Distros2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-29
- Writing a Postgres SQL Pretty Printer in Rust: Part 12 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-19
What Hacker News says?
And the above poster would seem to have an eminently sensible interviewing style, himself: http://blog.urth.org/2016/03/08/tech-interviewer-theory/
Comment linking /2016/03/08/tech-interviewer-theory/
on “How to Pass a Programming Interview”Submitted Perl 6 is fun as a story · 194 points
HN discussionUniversal formatter & linter tools already exist. A whole bunch of them, and they're much better than this one. I wrote about a number of them on my blog at https://blog.urth.org/2020/05/08/comparing-code-quality-meta...
Comment linking /2020/05/08/comparing-code-quality-meta-tools/
on “GitHub Super Linter: one linter to rule them all”Submitted Down the Golang Nil Rabbit Hole as a story · 181 points
HN discussionThere are already quite a few projects that do this, and IMO do it better. I did a write up of a number of them on my blog - https://blog.urth.org/2020/05/08/comparing-code-quality-meta...
Comment linking /2020/05/08/comparing-code-quality-meta-tools/
on “GitHub Super Linter: one linter to rule them all”Submitted Yet Another GitHub Profile Generator as a story · 83 points
HN discussionI've been playing Go (the board game) for a while now and I really enjoy it. I just got back from the US Go Congress. I wrote a blog post about it ( https://blog.urth.org/2018/07/29/my-u-s-go-congress-trip/ ). For more info on Go, check out: * Learn the rules - http://www.usgo.org/learn-play * Online Go Server - https://online-go.com/ - my personal favorite place to play online (other servers are not Linux-friendly…
Comment linking /2018/07/29/my-u-s-go-congress-trip/
on “Ask HN: What are some niche communities you enjoy?”Submitted Want Good Tools? Break Your Problems Down as a story · 34 points
HN discussionTAP is better than some things, but it has some serious issues that I wrote about on my blog a while back - https://blog.urth.org/2017/01/21/tap-is-great-except-when-it... Basically it's nearly impossible to fully parse it correctly.
Comment linking /2017/01/21/tap-is-great-except-when-its-not/
on “Multiple assertions are fine in a unit test”Submitted Project Stack Push/Pop as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI've written a fair bit about hiring processes on my blog. My most recent post about is at https://blog.urth.org/2019/07/11/a-technical-hiring-process-... We use this process at my current employer, and we've gotten mostly good feedback about it (including from people we didn't hire), though some candidates don't like it. The people we've hired using this process have been quite good, though I can't say if that's th…
Comment linking /2019/07/11/a-technical-hiring-process-revisited/
on “The dispassionate developer”Submitted A World Without Copyright as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI upvoted this because it's well written, even though I disagree with the conclusions. I'm not sure the suggested alternative coding challenges are any better. The text preview one starts ok, but introducing HTML raises the complexity through the roof! I wrote about my own experiences with coding challenges during my recent job search on my blog at https://blog.urth.org/2022/04/19/software-job-search-2022-re... I'll…
Comment linking /2022/04/19/software-job-search-2022-retrospective-coding-challenges/
on “In defense of coding interviews”Submitted Perl 5 Core Principles as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> Has GitHub introduced some “showcase” feature, ... Yes, you can pin repos to your profile. But you can also create a profile repo. See https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/setting-up-an... I wrote a blog post about this and the profile generator I made for myself - https://blog.urth.org/2022/03/28/yet-another-github-profile-...
Comment linking /2022/03/28/yet-another-github-profile-generator/
on “Resumes are dangerous?”Submitted Security Issues in Perl IP Address Distros as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLocation: Minneapolis, MN Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Perl, Go, JS/HTML/CSS/etc, C, Pg, lots more Resume: http://www.houseabsolute.com/resume/ Email: dave@urth.org See http://blog.urth.org/2016/12/27/looking-for-work/ for more about me and what I'm looking for.
Comment linking /2016/12/27/looking-for-work/
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2017)”Submitted Google Plus Circles Don't Solve My Problem as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAnd as predicted, the issue is turning up in other places, for instance https://blog.urth.org/2021/03/29/security-issues-in-perl-ip-... (comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26628827 )
Comment linking /2021/03/29/security-issues-in-perl-ip-address-distros/
on “Netmask NPM package, used by 270k+ projects, vulnerable to octal input data”Submitted Restoring Window Positions in Gnome After Switching Monitor Inputs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wrote a blog post comparing tools in this family a while back that may be of interest - https://blog.urth.org/2020/05/08/comparing-code-quality-meta...
Comment linking /2020/05/08/comparing-code-quality-meta-tools/
on “Pre-commit: framework for managing/maintaining multi-language pre-commit hooks”Submitted Software Job Search 2022 Retrospective: Coding Challenges as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wrote up what I think is a good hiring process for technical positions on my blog - https://blog.urth.org/2017/07/14/a-technical-hiring-process/
Comment linking /2017/07/14/a-technical-hiring-process/
on “Ask HN: How do you conduct coding interviews?”Submitted Front End Rust Without Node as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAt the last programming conference I attended, I saw a man and woman holding hands. These two people had not, to the best of my knowledge, met before the conference. I don't know how far this relationship went (not that it's my business), but it was clearly mutual, and it started at the conference. Conferences are both professional and social. In fact, it's hard to think of anything that is purely professional. Peop…
Comment linking /2011/09/05/conference-code-of-conduct-considered-crucial/
on “Sexism In Tech: We’re Not Making It Up”Submitted Writing a Postgres SQL Pretty Printer in Rust: Part 2 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://blog.urth.org/2022/04/19/software-job-search-2022-re... I have a two word answer: Intellectual Property. Not everyone is an accomplished Open Source publisher, nor should that be a requirement for employment. So what existing project do those candidates point the interviewer at? Someone else's IP? And then the hiring company is obligated in self-defense to make sure that it's not someone else's IP, lest it e…
Comment linking /2022/04/19/software-job-search-2022-retrospective-coding-challenges/
on “Software Job Search 2022 Retrospective: Coding Challenges”Submitted Comparing Code Quality Meta Tools as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Technical Hiring Process Revisited as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Technical Hiring Process as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
