Top all-time · #3473
Jesse Duffield
Personal blog · jesseduffield.comprogrammingai
Jesse Duffield writes Pursuit Of Laziness, a personal blog at jesseduffield.com about programming and ai. Since 2020, 22 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “Go’ing Insane: Endless Error Handling”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jesse Duffield's posts on Go's shortcomings, especially its repetitive error handling, and on Lazygit, the Git TUI he created. One commenter calls the Go series enlightening.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog by Jesse Duffield
Most-linked posts?
- Go’ing Insane: Endless Error Handling3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-09-14
- Array Functions and the Rule of Least Power3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-10
- Code Smell of the Day: Type Keys2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-08-09
- Still no consensus on testing private methods2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-08
- 1M Lazygit downloads, one embarrassment at a time2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-02-01
- Negative-Interest Tech Debt2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-05
- Lazygit creator interviews DHH (creator of Rails)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-22
- If you're out of ideas, build Memeware (2024)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-07
What Hacker News says?
Here's a blog series that you'll likely find enlightening: https://jesseduffield.com/Gos-Shortcomings-1/
Comment linking /Gos-Shortcomings-1/
on “Go 1.18”Submitted Beginner's Guide to Abstraction as a story · 243 points
HN discussionI was first convinced to try Lazygit after reading https://jesseduffield.com/Lazygit-5-Years-On/#weighing-in-on... (written by Lazygit's creator). Haven't regretted it at all; the tool is a pleasure to use due to its great design decisions. Contributing back to the codebase is also quite straightforward.
Comment linking /Lazygit-5-Years-On/
on “The lazy Git UI you didn't know you need”Submitted Go’ing Insane: Endless Error Handling as a story · 149 points
HN discussionThe extraordinarily repetitive error handling in Go drives me batty and I am thankfully not the only one who feels this way Part One: Endless Error Handling https://jesseduffield.com/Gos-Shortcomings-1/ That blog also covers a lot of Go's wonderful defects advertised as 'features'.
Comment linking /Gos-Shortcomings-1/
on “Things Go needs more than generics”Submitted Beyond coupling and cohesion: strategies for un-fucking yourself as a story · 108 points
HN discussionIsn’t there a Rob Pike quote for these? "Who cares? Shut up" It’s in the context of concerns from newer developers who don’t focus on what’s important. This is the same blog that gave us code smells, abstract more to hide it ( https://jesseduffield.com/Type-Keys-Revisited ) -- only to point out the possibly differing perspectives on software development. There’s a philosophy to the language that’s very clearly defin…
Comment linking /Type-Keys-Revisited
on “Go’ing Insane: Endless Error Handling”Submitted Code Smell of the Day: Type Keys as a story · 85 points
HN discussionNot a GUI, but a nice TUI : https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit Some videos show the workflow here : https://jesseduffield.com/15-Lazygit-Features/
Comment linking /15-Lazygit-Features/
on “Oh My Git – An open source game about learning Git”Submitted Still no consensus on testing private methods as a story · 68 points
HN discussionAuthor of the post here: I've written a follow-up that addresses some of the rebuttals made in these comments: https://jesseduffield.com/Unless-Responses/ If I've neglected to address your specific criticism I'm happy to do so here
Comment linking /Unless-Responses/
on “Read This Post ‘Unless’ You’re Not a Ruby Developer”Submitted 1M Lazygit downloads, one embarrassment at a time as a story · 67 points
HN discussionSubmitted Four approaches to implicit state in compound components, ranked as a story · 42 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can't Be Fucked: Underrated Cause of Tech Debt as a story · 19 points
HN discussionSubmitted I want my AI to get mad as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted Array Functions and the Rule of Least Power as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSubmitted My notes from deciding against AWS Lambda as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Life Without the Front Page as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Anti-Pattern of the Day: Type Keys as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Guide To Array Functions: Pick the least powerful tool for the job as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Go'ing Insane Part Two: Partial Privacy as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted It's Death as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted AI is stupid, just like me as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted If you're out of ideas, build Memeware (2024) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't Let Go (of compile-time knowledge) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stop selling me trichotomies as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lazygit creator interviews 'Uncle' Bob Martin as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Can't Programmers Agree on Anything? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Negative-Interest Tech Debt as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted AI-isms go deeper than em-dashes and 'load-bearing' as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
