Top all-time · #15955
John Whiles
Personal blog · johnwhiles.com/postsprogrammingculture
John Whiles writes John’s internet house, a personal blog at johnwhiles.com about programming and culture. Since 2021, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “Suddenly I Understand Software”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link John Whiles' posts on programming as theory and on declining consumer goods quality, such as shaving costs and microwaves. One commenter called a post a good read.
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.
John Whiles is a person from England. This website contains their blog, music, and other things. Hopefully it will one day be the sort of website that people will look at and say, “They used to make good websites back in the day. What happened?”
Most-linked posts?
- Suddenly I Understand Software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-18
What Hacker News says?
Good read. Thanks for sharing. I feel that this article goes really well with it. https://johnwhiles.com/posts/programming-as-theory
Comment linking /posts/programming-as-theory
on “Just Enough Software Architecture (2010)”Submitted Maybe you should do less 'work' as a story · 605 points
HN discussionSee also: Shaving Is Too Expensive: https://www.johnwhiles.com/posts/shaving Your Stuff Is Actually Worse Now: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23529587/consumer-goods-qualit... Your Sweaters Are Garbage: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/sweat...
Comment linking /posts/shaving
on “Why every microwave sucks these days, and the death of instant pot”Submitted Shaving is an example of how consumer products extract more money as a story · 502 points
HN discussionSubmitted AI slows down open source developers. Peter Naur can teach us why as a story · 363 points
HN discussionSubmitted Things I sort of believe about making music as a story · 199 points
HN discussionSubmitted Shaving is too expensive as a story · 86 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Loneliness of the Mid-Level Vimmer as a story · 39 points
HN discussionSubmitted My mum couldn't use WhatsApp because her font size is too large as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why and how I rewrote these Obsidian plugins as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Suddenly I Understand Software as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Some notes on making my new micro SaaS product with Remix as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Golden Age of Consumer Software as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Setting up my new computer, Neovim configs, and Spotify in the terminal as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is MadLAD Sentient? – An Interview as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't try to moderate your behaviour as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Big on Hacker News as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted YikesScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Make Cloudflare Properly Cache a Remix Site as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted On Doing Maintenance / Cataloguing Your Work as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted I made a Quotebacks plugin for Marked.js as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: A browser version of the 'ReAct' pattern for working with LLMs as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Check out uBlock origins element picker as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fixing a Memory Leak in a Ruby SideKiq Job as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rating the Ramen I ate in Japan as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted I've rebuilt this website too many times. I just did it again as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Power and Influence and Networking as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Linking into LinkedIn as a story · 1 points
HN discussion