Top all-time · #7550
John Lees-Miller
Personal blog · jdlm.info/articles · on HN as jdleesmillerprogrammingdatamath
John Lees-Miller's personal blog at jdlm.info covers programming, data and math. Since 2014, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 58 times, most often “Lessons from Building a Node App in Docker”. The last post was in 2023, 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 John Lees-Miller's posts on running Node.js and Docker in containers, and a slide deck on the Docker setup behind WriteLaTeX, as practical references for development workflows.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- Lessons from Building a Node App in Docker4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-03-17
- Bootstrap Confidence Intervals in SQL for PostgreSQL and BigQuery3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-06-15
- The Mathematics of _2048_: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-03-19
- Evaluating Compression with Pareto, Docker and Gnuplot2 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2017-05-07
- How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-07-04
- Lessons from Building Node Apps in Docker2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-09-20
- The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes (2018)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-26
What Hacker News says?
We've tried Docker for Mac with John Lees-Miller's excellent NodeJS in container development example http://jdlm.info/articles/2016/03/06/lessons-building-node-a... and it works great!
Comment linking /articles/2016/03/06/lessons-building-node-app-docker.html
on “Docker for Mac and Windows Beta”Submitted The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes as a story · 312 points
HN discussionI'd agree that 2048 is quite forgiving --- you can make some pretty serious errors and still recover to win [1]. I wouldn't say that makes it poorly designed, however; harder isn't always better, and making a game too hard can make it less fun, so it's about finding a balance that works. That said, flappy bird came out at about the same time as 2048 [2], and it was absurdly hard (at least for me) and still very succ…
Comment linking /articles/2017/08/05/markov-chain-2048.html
on “The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States with Combinatorics”Submitted How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time as a story · 245 points
HN discussionAs another Ultra alumnus, I also enjoyed reading this article. It's great to see algorithms like this making a real difference in transit, instead of just being simulated. It was a somewhat different problem, but FWIW I had more success with the Cross Entropy Method than with Simulated Annealing [1,2]. Maybe one for future research :) [1] http://jdlm.info/thesis_v11_hyperref.pdf [2] https://www.overleaf.com/articles…
Comment linking /thesis_v11_hyperref.pdf
on “Ridesharing Algorithms in TransLoc OnDemand”Submitted The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes (2018) as a story · 209 points
HN discussionThere's more details on the technical setup behind WriteLaTeX (in particular the use of docker) in this slide deck by John L-M: http://jdlm.info/ds-docker-demo/#18
Comment linking /ds-docker-demo/
on “WriteLaTeX: Lessons from Building a Scientific Startup [video]”Submitted The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States with Combinatorics as a story · 159 points
HN discussion(Plug) If you’re watching in person and want to be sure you’re in a place that will see the eclipse, I built a little web app to help with that [1]. It also has cloud data forecast overlayed for Spain. [1] https://jdlm.info/eclipse-locator/
Comment linking /eclipse-locator/
on “2026 Eclipse Webcams”Submitted Intro to Docker and how we use it at WriteLaTeX as a story · 157 points
HN discussionhttps://jdlm.info/ Occasional, mostly engineering and/or recreational mathematics content. A few highlights: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16790338 : The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12385707 : How a Technical Co-founder Spends their Time: Minute-by-minute Data for a Year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209216 : Lessons from Build…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States by Exhaustive Enumeration as a story · 150 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons from Building a Node App in Docker as a story · 134 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons from Building Node Apps in Docker as a story · 107 points
HN discussionSubmitted How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time: Minute-By-minute Data for a Year as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons from Building a Node App in Docker as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted How a CTO Spends His Time: Minute-By-minute Data for a Year as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted How a CTO Spends His Time: Minute-by-minute Data for a Year as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Short Intro to Docker as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Technical Co-Founder Spends Their Time: Minute-by-Minute Data for a Year as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Mathematics of _2048_: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States with Combinatorics as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evaluating Compression with Pareto, Docker and Gnuplot as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons Learned the Hard Way from Building a Node App in Docker as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: Eclipse locator: find the best place to see the solar eclipse as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bootstrap Confidence Intervals in SQL for PostgreSQL and BigQuery as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted End-to-End Testing with Node and Docker Compose as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons from Building Node Apps in Docker as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons from Building Node Apps in Docker (2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Zero to Driverless Race Car with Deep Learning as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
