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Khanlou

Personal blog · khanlou.comprogramming

Khanlou is a personal blog at khanlou.com about programming. Since 2012, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “What the Heck Is a Monad”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-24, and you can follow it by feed.

Visit the blog
52mentions?
26HN people?
2012–2025first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 14 in 2015

Most-linked posts?

  1. What the Heck Is a Monad
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-09-28
  2. Programmatically Generating Arbitrary Beautiful Colors
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-15
  3. Key-Value Observing Considered Harmful
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-12-03
  4. Thoughts on Haskell
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-10-13
  5. Reflections on six months of Swift
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-05-25
  6. Why I don't write Swift
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-03

What Hacker News says?

  1. dhussoe · 2025-12-03
    I do think that there's a meaningful difference between writing code that was bad (which I definitely did and do) and writing code where I didn't know what each line did . early on when I was doing iOS development I learned that "m34" was the magic trick to make flipping a view around have a nice perspective effect, and I didn't know what "m34" actually meant but I definitely knew what the effect of the line of code…

    Comment linking /2012/09/catransform3d-and-perspectives/

    on “The Junior Hiring Crisis”
  2. pcr910303 · 2020-05-27

    Submitted Regexes vs. Combinatorial Parsing (2019) as a story · 154 points

    HN discussion
  3. Aker89 · 2016-12-19
    can also recommend this approach at the moment: http://khanlou.com/2016/12/guarding-against-long-compiles/ This makes XCode warn you about functions with long compile times.

    Comment linking /2016/12/guarding-against-long-compiles/

    on “Building a Production Server Swift App”
  4. agronaut · 2016-05-10

    Submitted Doubling Down on Protocol-Oriented Programming as a story · 60 points

    HN discussion
  5. stevetrewick · 2016-04-23
    I've read a ton of such blog posts recently in exploring this subject - seems like the tradition is as soon as you believe you understand the monad you must immediately write a blog post explaining it and pointing out why everyone else's metaphor is too complicated. This one is kind of nice in its succinctness, but that ends up meaning it doesn't explain why I should care or what I would do with my monad once I have…

    Comment linking /2015/09/what-the-heck-is-a-monad/

    on “Functors, Applicatives, and Monads in Plain English”
  6. mr_golyadkin · 2015-10-17

    Submitted Thoughts on Haskell as a story · 41 points

    HN discussion
  7. danuker · 2022-05-17
    You can bundle the parameters into plain/pure/humble objects where it makes sense. https://khanlou.com/2014/12/pure-objects/ http://xunitpatterns.com/Humble%20Object.html

    Comment linking /2014/12/pure-objects/

    on “What does code readability mean? (2018)”
  8. khanlou · 2014-03-19

    Submitted Model View Whatever as a story · 20 points

    HN discussion
  9. dmur · 2014-03-15
    The promise of simplicity does not match the reality. It's explained well here, this was linked in the article too: http://khanlou.com/2013/12/kvo-considered-harmful/

    Comment linking /2013/12/kvo-considered-harmful/

    on “The Siren Call of KVO and Cocoa Bindings”
  10. khanlou · 2014-02-12

    Submitted What is the fuss with Reactive Cocoa? as a story · 10 points

    HN discussion
  11. wool_gather · 2018-10-19
    Not mentioned yet: Souroush Khanlou http://khanlou.com is always at the top of my list. Thoughtful and very practical material. Also Dave DeLong: https://davedelong.com/blog/ > I’ve missed Swift 2 & 3 In some ways this is an advantage to you. There was a fair bit of churn in that time period. Things have settled reasonably well now.

    Comment linking /

    on “Ask HN: Great iOS / Swift Blogs?”
  12. stevenp · 2013-12-03

    Submitted Key-Value Observing Considered Harmful as a story · 9 points

    HN discussion
  13. ingve · 2016-05-25

    Submitted Reflections on six months of Swift as a story · 7 points

    HN discussion
  14. ingve · 2016-01-21

    Submitted A Call for Blogs as a story · 7 points

    HN discussion
  15. khanlou · 2014-08-27

    Submitted “Metaprogramming” isn’t a scary word (not even in Objective-C) as a story · 6 points

    HN discussion
  16. marvel_boy · 2015-12-17

    Submitted MVVM is not very good as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  17. jaxondu · 2015-10-07

    Submitted What the Heck Is a Monad as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  18. khanlou · 2014-09-19

    Submitted Anatomy of a Feature: Push Notification Architecture as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  19. ingve · 2018-09-19

    Submitted Bloom Filters and Swift 4.2 as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  20. ingve · 2015-10-13

    Submitted Thoughts on Haskell as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  21. ingve · 2015-08-06

    Submitted There are no mysteries as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  22. khanlou · 2014-11-18

    Submitted Wink in All Colors as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  23. goranmoomin · 2023-02-23

    Submitted Programmatically Generating Arbitrary Beautiful Colors as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  24. ingve · 2017-03-22

    Submitted On Comments as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  25. ingve · 2016-08-18

    Submitted My Least Favorite Thing About Swift as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  26. sixstringtheory · 2016-05-26

    Submitted Reflection on six months of Swift as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  27. ingve · 2015-11-12

    Submitted Keeping Your Classes Shorter Than 250 Lines as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  28. ckurose · 2015-10-01

    Submitted What the Heck is a Monad? as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  29. jasondecastro · 2015-07-19

    Submitted Why I don't write Swift as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  30. mpweiher · 2015-06-03

    Submitted Why I don't write Swift as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion

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