Top all-time · #40
Julia Evans
Personal blog · jvns.ca · on HN as jvnsprogrammingsystems
Julia Evans's personal blog at jvns.ca covers programming and systems. Since 2013, 637 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,236 times, most often “Get your work recognized: write a brag document”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 15 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link jvns.ca for its clear, accessible explainers and zines on Linux, networking, SQLite, git and containers. Commenters say they suit newcomers.
- Recommended for · 15 comments
- 'very accessible'; zines an 'amazing way' to explain technical concepts; articles 'very good'; 'a great model'
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Julia Evans
Most-linked posts?
- /49 people · 62 mentions · first linked 2017-01-30
- Get your work recognized: write a brag document24 people · 25 mentions · first linked 2019-07-01
- /17 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2017-01-30
- Firecracker: Start a VM in less than a second11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2021-01-23
- /9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2014-11-10
- Notes on Building Debugging Puzzles9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-04-17
- Git Documentation, Rewritten for Humans8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2026-01-08
- New(ish) command line tools8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-04-12
- What even is a container: namespaces and cgroups8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-10-11
- How to ask good questions7 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2016-12-31
What Hacker News says?
One mini-feature I really like: authors highlighting their own favorite or popular articles. I think I saw it first on Julia Evans' blog ( https://jvns.ca/categories/favorite/ ). I also added it to mine ( https://thorstenball.com/blog/ ) and found the exercise of going through the posts and tagging them very enjoyable.
Comment linking /categories/favorite/
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted When your coworker does great work, tell their manager as a story · 1074 points
HN discussionRelevant: https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/12/06/dns-doesn-t-propagate/
Comment linking /blog/2021/12/06/dns-doesn-t-propagate/
on “Mess with DNS”Submitted Mess with DNS as a story · 958 points
HN discussionBecause she loves it! She also cover her strategy here( https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/09/20/teaching-by-filling-in-knowl... )
Comment linking /blog/2021/09/20/teaching-by-filling-in-knowledge-gaps/
on “Mess with DNS”Submitted SQL queries don't start with SELECT as a story · 905 points
HN discussionI am bad at this as well. I think part of it is to do with my upbringing as a poor, smart kid at a bad school. The way to be well thought of by teachers was to not cause a fuss and get good grades whilst the teachers concentrated on the disruptive kids. I shudder at the thought of becoming one of those gobshites that asks senior management questions in townhalls like "How do you stay so grounded with all the awesome…
Comment linking /blog/brag-documents/
on “If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued”Submitted Some tiny personal programs I've written as a story · 873 points
HN discussionCheck these comics they are mostly about linux and networking: https://jvns.ca/zines/
Comment linking /zines/
on “Network Protocols”Submitted New(ish) command line tools as a story · 760 points
HN discussionHi, I come across a lot of blogs when I curate for my newsletter Interesting Things [1]. Just looking through the links that have been curated in the past month or so, I would suggest: Tech - https://wasteofserver.com/ - https://tonsky.me/ - https://brianschrader.com/ - https://blog.thea.codes/ - https://fasterthanli.me/ - https://jvns.ca/ - https://blog.royalsloth.eu/ Non-tech - https://www.drorpoleg.com/ - About w…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Build Impossible Programs as a story · 652 points
HN discussionTime to pull up my RSS reader! https://drewdevault.com/ http://jvns.ca/ https://www.benkuhn.net/ https://danluu.com/ https://scattered-thoughts.net/ http://antirez.com/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/ https://neilkakkar.com/ https://zachholman.com/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/ https://endler.dev/ https://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/ https://www.the-paper-trail.org/ https://tonsky.me/ https://dave.cheney.net/ https://b…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Nginx Playground as a story · 603 points
HN discussion- https://www.joshwcomeau.com/ - https://www.kalzumeus.com/ - https://pomb.us/ - https://jvns.ca/ - https://monicalent.com/ - https://www.taniarascia.com/ - https://seanbarry.dev/ Shameless plug, I quite like my own: https://ruairidh.dev
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted How Containers Work: Overlayfs as a story · 582 points
HN discussionMiscellaneous technical stuff: - https://danluu.com/ - https://blog.jessfraz.com/ - https://adamwathan.me/ - https://jvns.ca/ - https://rachelbythebay.com/w/ - https://dankim.org/ - https://mtlynch.io/ - https://rgz.ee/ - https://markdotto.com/ - https://thorstenball.com/ - https://sarahdrasnerdesign.com/writing/ - https://lukesmith.xyz/ - Quirky minimalist linux & free software stuff. I don't agree with many of his…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Tcpdump is amazing as a story · 567 points
HN discussionA few of mine: - https://www.windytan.com/ (windytan: signal processing) - https://www.righto.com/ (Ken Sheriff: IC reverse engineering, vintage computing, misc) - https://jvns.ca/ (Julie Evans: software development, particularly networking) And even though it's not a written blog, a special mention goes to Ben Eater's website, which links to his fantastic YouTube series on building an 8-bit CPU from logic chips, an…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Patterns in Confusing Explanations as a story · 566 points
HN discussionA couple of my favorite blogs - http://antirez.com/ - https://martin.kleppmann.com/archive.html - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing - https://ma.tt/ - https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/ - https://jvns.ca/ - https://www.johndcook.com/blog - http://feross.org/ - https://ridiculousfish.com/blog/ - https://blog.andrewcantino.com/ - https://nickcraver.com/blog/ - https://blog.acolyer.org - https://blog.coding…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted How I use Wireshark as a story · 552 points
HN discussionDon't forget my favorite size, "statement". This is half of letter size. Sometimes used for small statements, sometimes used as letter folded. Hacker News users may be familiar with Julia Evans ( http://jvns.ca ) who creates technology zines that work in both A4 and Letter sizes, folded in half.
Comment linking /
on “I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)”Submitted How is a binary executable organized? Let's explore it (2014) as a story · 501 points
HN discussionFor people who enjoy this article I recommend reading the two-parter “How does SQLite work?” [1] [2] by Julia Evans. It too is an exploration into the inner workings but diving deeper into code. And for those interested in more details on b-trees, there’s “The Ubiquitous B-Tree” by Douglas Cramer which I enjoyed a lot. [1] https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/09/27/how-does-sqlite-work-part-1-... [2] https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/…
Comment linking /blog/2014/10/02/how-does-sqlite-work-part-2-btrees/
on “SQLite Internals: Pages and B-trees”Submitted How Does Sqlite Work? (2014) as a story · 480 points
HN discussion> there is no time/budget to re-do it in house What are the actual time cost savings when you take the total costs into consideration?[1][2] What would it look like if you didn't implement an app by stringing together dozens/hundreds/thousands of third-party modules implemented bottom-up, but instead took control of the whole thing top-down?[3] 1. https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/11/15/esbuild-vue/ 2. https://news.ycombina…
Comment linking /blog/2021/11/15/esbuild-vue/
on “Security issue related to the NPM registry”Submitted Rust in 2018: easier to use as a story · 462 points
HN discussionI would like to know, when you run into the situation that you don’t know was is going on with what you are building and feel a sense of confusion, do you: 1) Stop and spend time trying to get a clear mental model of what you are confused about 2) Push forward and try to build despite not understanding In the past, when I tried doing super-ambitious things, I used the second strategy. Many sleep-deprived (tip: “slee…
Comment linking /blog/good-questions/
on “Build Impossible Programs”Submitted Popular Git config options as a story · 446 points
HN discussion
