Top all-time · #12017
Hugh E. Williams
Personal blog · hughewilliams.comprogrammingdatacareer
Hugh E. Williams's personal blog at hughewilliams.com covers programming, data and career. Since 2012, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 13 times, most often “Myths about Hash Tables”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Hugh Williams' posts on software and search engineering, including myths about hash tables and how search engines rewrite queries. Commenters cite the query-rewriting post as a source.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Hugh Williams is an Executive Vice President at Skydance. He is also co-host of the Tech Overflow podcast and a charity board member. Hugh is a co-founder and the Chair of Australian charity Tech Futures Australia that runs the successful Code for Schools programme. In 2025, the charity supported co
Most-linked posts?
- Myths about Hash Tables2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-10-01
What Hacker News says?
Engineers avoiding hash tables, yes, that's one myth. Still waiting for the other four promised in the headline. In the age of javascript everywhere I'd say that hash tables have pretty much won. I was curious about which corner of software technology the author was coming from where hash tables are routinely questioned (embedded C maybe?), but even the followup post does not quite explain it. ( https://hughewilliam…
Comment linking /2013/06/03/reflecting-on-my-hash-table-post/
on “Myths about Hash Tables”Submitted Myths about Hash Tables as a story · 101 points
HN discussionGoogle and every other search engine rewrite queries. See eg. https://hughewilliams.com/2012/03/19/query-rewriting-in-sear... https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36252.pdf
Comment linking /2012/03/19/query-rewriting-in-search-engines/
on “Googling “Felsius” gives results for “F””Submitted Myths about Hash Tables as a story · 86 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to lead a successful small teams as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ranking at eBay (comparison with Twitter) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Managing small teams: the tools you should use as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Clicks in search as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Compression, Speed, and Search Engines as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Query Rewriting in Search Engines as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The “Steel Thread” Model - Changing platforms at Scale as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Snippets: The unsung heroes of web search as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted An opportunity that Facebook is missing as a story · 1 points
HN discussion