Top all-time · #7868
Infinite Negative Utility
Personal blog · journal.infinitenegativeutility.comprogrammingwriting
Infinite Negative Utility is a personal blog at journal.infinitenegativeutility.com about programming and writing. Since 2020, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach (2018)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this journal for posts on error handling in Pony, leaving Haskell, and a negative review of a maths book. One commenter calls that review interesting and agrees with its points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach (2018)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-04-10
- Celebrating Daemontools2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-24
- Leaving Haskell Behind2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-24
- Resources, Laziness, and Continuation-Passing Style2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-07
- Blocks Courtesy of Konrad Zuse (2014)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-10
What Hacker News says?
I tried using Pony for 2019's Advent of Code, and I ran into this problem. I ended up writing a whole blog post about the way that I tackled error-handling, which I don't think is the solution (especially since the Pony team is looking at new ways of expressing error-handling) but was sufficient for the programs I was writing: https://journal.infinitenegativeutility.com/pony-errors-and-...
Comment linking /pony-errors-and-logging
on “Pony – High-Performance Safe Actor Programming”Submitted Structurally-Typed Condition Handling as a story · 55 points
HN discussionHere's an interesting review: https://journal.infinitenegativeutility.com/why-i-dont-love-... It's a negative review, and I agree with all its points. In addition, I don't like Hofstadter's proof of Gödel's theorem - it's so LONG that it's hard to keep track of the parts. (The best proof of Gödel's theorem I've come across was given verbally by John Conway, and he had the opposite strategy - make the proof as brief…
Comment linking /why-i-dont-love-godel-escher-bach
on “Ask HN: Recommend a maths book for a teenager?”Submitted Objects in Functional Languages as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI'm sure that anyone who likes to hack their systems will surely appreciate runit. But I wonder if the larger crowd is familiar with the philosophy and ecosystem behind runit that makes it such a pleasure to work with. Runit is a member of a family of supervision suites known as the daemontools family . daemontools [1] is a process supervision suite that Daniel J Bernstein released in 1997, and is still in use today…
Comment linking /celebrating-daemontools
on “Runit Linux: Complete Guide to Unix Init Scheme with Service Supervision”Submitted Blocks Courtesy of Konrad Zuse (2014) as a story · 34 points
HN discussionThere's a journal [0] on infinitenegativeutility, discussed here 40 days ago, with a section called "What pushed me away from Haskell?". That author points at issues that are primarily cultural. One example is a relaxed attitude toward backward compatibility from the GHC team. [0] https://journal.infinitenegativeutility.com/leaving-haskell-... If I grab an old Haskell project, even one without any external dependenc…
Comment linking /leaving-haskell-behind
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2023)”Submitted A Taste of Matzo: A Language for Random Text as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach (2018) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Leaving Haskell Behind as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Resources, Laziness, and Continuation-Passing Style as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Celebrating Daemontools as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Blocks Courtesy of Konrad Zuse (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How I Do Generative Art: In Praise of Netpbm as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Resources, Laziness, and Continuation-Passing Style as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion