Top all-time · #1857
James Golick
Personal blog · jamesgolick.comprogrammingstartups
James Golick writes James on Software, a personal blog at jamesgolick.com about programming and startups. Since 2007, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 47 times, most often “Crazy, Heretical, and Awesome: The Way I Write Rails Apps”. The last post was in 2014, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link James Golick's blog, which covers Rails architecture, service objects, Ruby method caching and the limits of scaling in the cloud. Commenters cite it for explaining these topics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Blog of James Golick: software engineer, entrepreneur, and speaker.
Most-linked posts?
- Crazy, Heretical, and Awesome: The Way I Write Rails Apps5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-03-23
- How tcmalloc Works3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-05-21
- We are experiencing too much load. Let's add a new server.2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-25
- MRI's Method Caches2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-15
- How to Lose 100 Pounds2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-07-09
- What does "scalable database" mean?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-07-03
What Hacker News says?
Having little experience with Rails, it's the tone of that "Crazy, Heretical" article [1] that really strikes me. That tone where you're laboring to describe something that really truly does make sense when you're in the company of a bunch of people that just don't want to hear it. There's too much purism in those kinds of arguments, arguments that really are more about spectrums. It sounds like Rails is really grea…
Comment linking /2010/3/14/crazy-heretical-and-awesome-the-way-i-write-rails-apps.html
on “My time with Rails is up”Submitted Reminder: "Broken gets fixed, but shitty lasts forever" as a story · 169 points
HN discussionRails used as intended can be a real pain to upgrade, I agree. Recently I have been developing applications in the "thin-model, thin-controller, with a service layer and external API wrappers" style, as espoused by Gary Bernhardt [1] and others [2] [3] [4] [5]. I upgraded to the latest Rails this morning on one app, and apart from swapping the Money gem to use the git repository, until they have a new version out wi…
Comment linking /2010/3/14/crazy-heretical-and-awesome-the-way-i-write-rails-apps.html
on “Rails 4.2 released”Submitted Memory Allocators 101 as a story · 142 points
HN discussionIf you're a Rails developer, you probably have a config/initializers/backtrace_silencers.rb file in your app. Think of James the next time you see that file. He wrote the initial implementation: http://jamesgolick.com/2007/12/1/noisy-backtraces-got-you-do... DHH later ported the work to Rails: https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/f42c77f927eb49b00e84d3... I knew James mostly online and a little in person from vario…
Comment linking /2007/12/1/noisy-backtraces-got-you-down.html
on “James Golick has died”Submitted MRI's Method Caches as a story · 121 points
HN discussionThe guy lost 100 pounds. That's impressive. http://jamesgolick.com/2012/7/7/how-to-lose-100-pounds.html
Comment linking /2012/7/7/how-to-lose-100-pounds.html
on “James Golick has died”Submitted Why RubyGems Needs Loren Segal as a story · 90 points
HN discussionhttp://jamesgolick.com/about.html
Comment linking /about.html
on “James Golick has died”Submitted Friendly: NoSQL With MySQL in Ruby as a story · 83 points
HN discussionDefining instance-specific behavior of any kind is catastrophic to method caching. JRuby has a hierarchical method cache so it can clear only what's needed, but MRI does not: http://jamesgolick.com/2013/4/14/mris-method-caches.html The late, great James Golick had a patch to add one once, but it never got merged upstream. If you care about performance even the tiniest bit at all whatsoever, please don't use the tech…
Comment linking /2013/4/14/mris-method-caches.html
on “The Dynamic Def – abusing Ruby's def statement”Submitted The Cost of Ruby 1.9.3's GC::Profiler as a story · 70 points
HN discussionThe idea of instant scalability is somewhat flawed. James Golick does a pretty good job of explaining why here: http://jamesgolick.com/2010/10/27/we-are-experiencing-too-mu...
Comment linking /2010/10/27/we-are-experiencing-too-much-load-lets-add-a-new-server..html
on “The Cloud Is Not for You”Submitted Objectify: A Better Way to Build Rails Applications as a story · 65 points
HN discussionYou posted something similar at http://jamesgolick.com/2011/6/1/why-rubygems-needs-loren-seg... and I've checked a few other posts of yours surrounding the context. I'm not sure why you're giving Loren grief. > If Loren can be part of that solution, I'd love to see him working for RubyGems rather than against it, for sure. I know you're trying to be a diplomatic bridge for the RubyGems team, however saying things li…
Comment linking /2011/6/1/why-rubygems-needs-loren-segal.html
on “Why RubyGems Needs Loren Segal”Submitted How tcmalloc Works as a story · 63 points
HN discussionI'm starting to use service objects, which are responsible for coordinating things when multiple models are required to perform an operation, or complex business logic is involved. James Golick has a great blog post on that approach at http://jamesgolick.com/2010/3/14/crazy-heretical-and-awesome...
Comment linking /2010/3/14/crazy-heretical-and-awesome-the-way-i-write-rails-apps.html
on “Put Callback Logic Into Callback Objects [Rails]”Submitted Crazy, Heretical, and Awesome: The Way I Write Rails Apps as a story · 56 points
HN discussiongoogle James Golick http://jamesgolick.com/ He has some amazing conference lectures about how he scaled his 1.5million page view website.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: hackernews coders have experience with high traffic web apps?”Submitted Wearing Out My Delete Key as a story · 32 points
HN discussionSubmitted Monkey-Patching, Single Responsibility Principle, and Scala Implicits as a story · 26 points
HN discussionSubmitted We don't write tests. There just isn't time for luxuries. as a story · 24 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rails employee expected to spend 50% of his time doing what he desires as a story · 23 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Lose 100 Pounds as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted How tcmalloc Works as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSubmitted Crazy, Heretical, and Awesome: The Way I Write Rails Apps as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Problem with User Stories as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSubmitted On Mocks and Mockist Testing as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Distributed Version Control Matters as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted What does "scalable database" mean? as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
