Top all-time · #233
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
Personal blog · jacobian.org · on HN as jacobianprogrammingcareer
Jacob Kaplan-Moss's personal blog at jacobian.org covers programming and career. Since 2007, 197 different Hacker News readers have linked it 299 times, most often “Embrace the Grind”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jacob Kaplan-Moss's blog for writing on engineering management, team work and software estimation, and list it among favourite blogs. One commenter calls it excellent.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Called excellent for engineering management and team work writing; praised for layoff advice and estimation series.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Embrace the Grind9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2021-04-07
- My Estimation Technique5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-06-30
- REST worst practices4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2009-05-01
- What to Write – Jacob Kaplan-Moss (2009)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-04-13
- Writing great documentation4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-12-05
- The limits of "unlimited" vacation4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-03-19
- So you want a new (Django) admin?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-07-01
- What to write (technical documentation)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-07-27
- Writing Great Documentation (2009)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-02-02
- Writing Great Documentation4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-05-26
What Hacker News says?
Some of the blogs I like, but don’t read enough (I almost ceased reading blogs at all lately): - https://jacobian.org/posts/ - https://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ (classic) - https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /posts/
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Embrace the Grind as a story · 1167 points
HN discussionIt seams to me that this bust of economy that is rolling has potential to be even more destructive than previous one of 2008. Brace yourself. Here is good list of advices in case of layoff, it was posted in HN few days ago https://jacobian.org/2020/mar/13/layoffs-are-coming/
Comment linking /2020/mar/13/layoffs-are-coming/
on “Ask HN: Have you been laid off?”Submitted My Python Development Environment, 2018 Edition as a story · 530 points
HN discussionA lot of the origin of this work is from Jacob Kaplan-Moss who did the original refactor of the Django documentation. He wrote up the concepts here in 2009: https://jacobian.org/series/great-documentation/ Daniele Procida built on this and formalized it through this resource, which is really amazing and definitely the best resource for writing docs that I know of.
Comment linking /series/great-documentation/
on “A Framework for Writing Better Documentation”Submitted That wild Ask a Manager story as a story · 444 points
HN discussionhi marjin! thanks again for all your work on prosemirror. the docs are quite thorough (and have gotten moreso in the past few months!), but a specific thing which i ended up needing to dive into the code for was something like setting up a custom menubar[1] with a menugroup. The docs back then (and even now) do this thing where they get rapidly tautological and have you hop around between type definitions but don't,…
Comment linking /writing/great-documentation/
on “Draft.js – Rich Text Editor Framework for React”Submitted Exit interviews are a trap as a story · 424 points
HN discussionDescriptivists and Prescriptivists http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-prescriptivis...
Comment linking /writing/descriptivists-and-prescriptivists/
on “Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome”Submitted Tech compensation in 2021 as a story · 399 points
HN discussionReminds me of: https://jacobian.org/2021/apr/7/embrace-the-grind/
Comment linking /2021/apr/7/embrace-the-grind/
on “An Unreasonable Amount of Time”Submitted Software estimation is hard – do it anyway as a story · 399 points
HN discussionAlong a similar theme, Jacob Kaplan-Moss wrote an essay in 2021 entitled "Embrace the Grind," also quoting Penn & Teller: > I often have people newer to the tech industry ask me for secrets to success. There aren’t many, really, but this secret — being willing to do something so terrifically tedious that it appears to be magic — works in tech too. https://jacobian.org/2021/apr/7/embrace-the-grind/ Discussed at https…
Comment linking /2021/apr/7/embrace-the-grind/
on “An Unreasonable Amount of Time”Submitted My Python Development Environment, 2020 Edition as a story · 393 points
HN discussionThis is just the first article in the series. I'd recommend reading all 4 articles before rebuking this one. https://jacobian.org/series/estimation/ For example, here's an except from the SWAG article: > The tradeoff is time: estimation techniques, including mine, require some time to produce any level of accuracy. > Sometimes, though, it’s less important that an estimate be accurate than that it be quick.
Comment linking /series/estimation/
on “Software estimation is hard – do it anyway”Submitted Paying people to work on open source is good as a story · 343 points
HN discussionHere is the author's follow-up post on the topic: https://jacobian.org/2021/may/25/my-estimation-technique .
Comment linking /2021/may/25/my-estimation-technique
on “Software estimation is hard – do it anyway”Submitted Breaking down tasks as a story · 317 points
HN discussion> Many Agile methodologies involve arbitrary scoring systems – story points, t-shirt sizing, etc. – deliberately designed to help avoid giving estimates in time-scale units. I can't tell if there's a really deep misunderstanding of what the author calls "no-estimate" systems, or broad agreement but with a small/superficial difference in preference on an implementation detail. > However, sooner or later, someone’s go…
Comment linking /2021/may/25/my-estimation-technique/
on “Software estimation is hard – do it anyway”Submitted Thank you, Rails as a story · 297 points
HN discussionThere was a discussion a few years ago about revamping/updating the Django Admin - but I don't think it got much traction: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/django-developers/Vozu6U3g... My understanding is it's not something they care enough about yet to fix - or it's too hard/expensive. UPDATE: Also found this blog post from one of the core devs/founders: https://jacobian.org/writing/so-you-want-a-new-admin/
Comment linking /writing/so-you-want-a-new-admin/
on “Django 1.11 Released”Submitted Is my advice too mercenary? as a story · 247 points
HN discussionhttps://jacobian.org/2024/jan/10/philanthropy-update/ took 15 seconds to find on the website.
Comment linking /2024/jan/10/philanthropy-update/
on “Paying people to work on open source is good”Submitted Simple product management tricks as a story · 244 points
HN discussionhttps://jacobian.org is Jacob Kaplan-Moss's website https://jacobin.com is a socialist magazine This blog post is from the former!
Comment linking /
on “Paying people to work on open source is good”Submitted Writing great documentation as a story · 243 points
HN discussionI’m not that impressed with Diataxis, considering it is basically describing the approach of Django project’s docs—which (both docs and the aporoach) predate Diataxis by many years—without giving any credit that I know of. Jacob Kaplan-Moss described[0] the approach in 2009 (he omitted the How To guides, but they are in fact part of Django docs for as long as the framework is widely used). If there was a person to c…
Comment linking /2009/nov/10/what-to-write/
on “Every board game rulebook is awful [pdf]”Submitted When is short tenure a red flag? as a story · 209 points
HN discussionGames SHOULD be a solved problem. There is no good reason for us to have to reinvent the wheel over and over. There are compsci white papers that neatly solve all of the big problems games run into. But games are not a solved problem. There are multiple overlapping reasons why. One is that gamedevs often just don't do the research. Why would they? The deadlines loom, the milestones have to be delivered, nobody cares…
Comment linking /2022/sep/9/quality-is-systemic/
on “Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting?”Submitted A reading list for new engineering managers as a story · 177 points
HN discussion
