Top all-time · #3970
Jezen Thomas
Personal blog · jezenthomas.com · on HN as yakshaving_jgtprogrammingweb
Jezen Thomas's personal blog at jezenthomas.com covers programming and web. Since 2014, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 96 times, most often “How I write Elm applications”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Jezen Thomas's posts on deploying a Haskell web service with Nix, defensive Bash programming, and static analysis of shell scripts in Vim. Comments do not judge the writing itself.
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.
Co-founder and CTO of Supercede. Haskell, Yesod, Nix. Technical audits and due diligence.
Most-linked posts?
- How I write Elm applications3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-11-07
- We Don't Do Daily Stand-Ups at Supercede3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-30
- How I Work from Anywhere in the World2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-02-02
- Clojure Inventor Rich Hickey Doesn't Know Types2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-10
- Visualising Code Growth with Git and D3.js2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-10-25
- Deploying a Haskell Web Service with Nix (2016)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-02-09
- Shell Script Static Analysis in Vim2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-05-17
- My Technological Regrets2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-30
- How I Write Invoices in Vim (2015)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-11-04
- Fast Counting with PostgreSQL and Haskell2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-25
What Hacker News says?
https://jezenthomas.com/posts/ Angry rants about software. The site is written using a combination of Brainfuck, APL, Prolog, and Fortran. … just kidding.
Comment linking /posts/
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Deploying a Haskell Web Service with Nix as a story · 120 points
HN discussionHere’s a good one: https://stevelosh.com/ And here’s mine: https://jezenthomas.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are good solo developer blogs that you enjoy reading?”Submitted How I write Elm applications as a story · 109 points
HN discussionIt's a bit old now, but not that much has changed. All my commercial projects use essentially this method of deployment. https://jezenthomas.com/deploying-a-haskell-web-service-with...
Comment linking /deploying-a-haskell-web-service-with-nix/
on “What Is Nix?”Submitted How I Write Invoices in Vim as a story · 109 points
HN discussionI care about outdoor temperature (especially before I go out for a drive in the car), so I put the current local weather in my tmux status bar. It derives your location from your IP address. https://jezenthomas.com/showing-the-weather-in-tmux/
Comment linking /showing-the-weather-in-tmux/
on “Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?”Submitted We Don't Do Daily Stand-Ups at Supercede as a story · 64 points
HN discussionI don’t think you are understanding me. Here is a clear example of what I am talking about. https://jezenthomas.com/2022/12/at-least-roundtrip-serialisa...
Comment linking /2022/12/at-least-roundtrip-serialisation/
on “Clean Code vs. A Philosophy Of Software Design”Submitted Fast Counting with PostgreSQL and Haskell as a story · 42 points
HN discussionI panicked for a moment, since I travel a lot and changing my MAC address is the only way to circumvent draconian limited WiFi rules. Glad to see this is only temporary, and it'll be fixed before I end up buying a new machine. Here's how I get around free WiFi limitations while travelling: https://jezenthomas.com/free-internet-on-trains/
Comment linking /free-internet-on-trains/
on “macOS no longer allows changing wifi mac address”Submitted I Feel Unsafe as a story · 26 points
HN discussionI wrote a small script to stick my local weather (based on IP address) in my tmux status bar. https://jezenthomas.com/showing-the-weather-in-tmux/
Comment linking /showing-the-weather-in-tmux/
on “Ask HN: Can I see your scripts?”Submitted Why We Don't Do Daily Stand-Ups at Supercede as a story · 13 points
HN discussionA HTML validator for websites and web applications. It’s just not scalable having to do this manually, and having valid HTML is still important. Wrong HTML can cause bugs, and can harm accessibility. This is becoming more important now in Europe with new accessibility laws coming into force next month. https://jezenthomas.com/2025/05/dont-skip-html-validation/
Comment linking /2025/05/dont-skip-html-validation/
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)”Submitted Test Spies in Haskell as a story · 11 points
HN discussionfunction remac { sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -z sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//') sudo networksetup -detectnewhardware echo $(ifconfig en0 | grep ether) } Explanation: https://jezenthomas.com/free-internet-on-trains/ Also, when I need to share a code snippet I pipe it to this: alias ix="curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io" Oh, and perha…
Comment linking /free-internet-on-trains/
on “Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases?”Submitted The World's Most Boring Build System as a story · 8 points
HN discussionYou can achieve the same thing (minus the Selenium part) on MacOS with this: https://jezenthomas.com/free-internet-on-trains/ I would paste the code snippet, but it doesn't format nicely on HN.
Comment linking /free-internet-on-trains/
on “Free Hotel Wifi with Python and Selenium”Submitted Showing the Weather in Tmux as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> What have you written in haskell that we can use? My three commercial Haskell projects are detailed here[0]. [0]: https://jezenthomas.com/projects/
Comment linking /projects/
on “What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell”Submitted Production Haskell Style Guide as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI’ve seen a few of his talks, but I do not accept his position on types more generally. I wrote a rebuttal to a similar talk he gave a few years ago. https://jezenthomas.com/rich-hickey-doesnt-know-types/
Comment linking /rich-hickey-doesnt-know-types/
on “Try Clojure – An interactive tutorial in the browser”Submitted Solving a Maths Riddle with Bad Haskell as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis was a fun one: https://jezenthomas.com/you-think-css-in-js-is-bad/
Comment linking /you-think-css-in-js-is-bad/
on “Cool HTML elements nobody uses”Submitted How I Write Elm Applications as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSummaries of my projects are here: https://jezenthomas.com/
Comment linking /
on “Why GitHub used Haskell for Semantic”Submitted Using Git to Manage Todos as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> By that logic, any government funded public defender is the taxpayer condoning murder, robbery, etc. No it isn't. We all have to pay our taxes. PETA didn't have to pay Rod Coronado. > I would argue you have this talking point because of a concerted media effort to brand things as "Eco-Terrorism" They firebombed research facilities to effect ideological change. This is the textbook definition of terrorism. > In whi…
Comment linking /2024/11/I-feel-unsafe/
on “Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects”Submitted Nix Overrides That Expire Themselves as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
