Top all-time · #2688
Letters To A New Developer
Personal blog · letterstoanewdeveloper.com · on HN as mooredscareerprogramming
Letters To A New Developer is a personal blog at letterstoanewdeveloper.com about career and programming. Since 2018, 28 different Hacker News readers have linked it 431 times, most often “"It never gets easier, you just go faster." (2020)”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this newsletter and blog for career and life advice aimed at new developers, such as essays on the adults-in-the-room problem, playing for motivation, and a book with a table of contents.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
What I wish I had known when starting my development career
Most-linked posts?
- "It never gets easier, you just go faster." (2020)6 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-04-27
- Letters to a New Developer4 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2018-12-09
- Avoid the Impossible Goal of Being a Know It All3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-03-08
- Learn Your Standard Library3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-10-19
- There are no adults in the room3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-09-06
- Learn a Text Editor (2018)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-20
- Show HN: Letters to a New Developer, the Book2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-07-05
- Always Be Journaling (2018)2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-12-15
- Learn two (programming) languages (2019)2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-11-29
- How to Excel at Your Job as a New Developer (2019)2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-07-03
What Hacker News says?
> It looks like this is the author's fourth post and s/he hit a home run with the top post on HN. > But that's rarely how things work. Totally agree. I've written a fair bit about blogging, but when I started a new blog aimed at helping new developers, for the first month I wrote more posts than I had visitors (!): https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/10/14/how-to-start-b... I think that six months is enough time…
Comment linking /2019/10/14/how-to-start-blogging/
on “If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs”Submitted Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work” (2019) as a story · 332 points
HN discussionThere are no adults in the room ( https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/08/12/there-are-no-a... ) During my career I was always looking for some senior developer to guide me in my work. I was hoping someone has figured everything out and could tell me whether my solutions where good or bad. It frustrated me that most of them did not really have a clue and could not help me. I blamed it to my company which would no…
Comment linking /2019/08/12/there-are-no-adults-in-the-room/
on “Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life”Submitted There are no adults in the room as a story · 215 points
HN discussionThanks. I ended up writing about my experience, which helped. https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/05/04/how-to-go-thro...
Comment linking /2020/05/04/how-to-go-through-a-layoff/
on “Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce”Submitted Avoid Working Alone as a story · 212 points
HN discussionhttp://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/ I don't know why you should read it, but I read it to find postcards from my past self, including problems that stymied me, books that affected me and technologies I no longer use. If you are a new or potential developer, you might be interested in my blog focused on that topic. I give advice and hope to help new developers avoid my mistakes: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Always Be Journaling (2018) as a story · 156 points
HN discussion> I think engineers would do well to know that you are a COST CENTER to the business and the people who run it. They need you to make their product so they can make money but they hire you begrudgingly. I don't agree. Engineers are sometimes a cost center, but they can also be a profit center. You can help revenue by decreasing expenses by automating something or noticing how the business is wasting money w/r/t tech…
Comment linking /2018/10/12/understand-the-business/
on “If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees”Submitted The Surprising Number of Programmers Who Can’t Program as a story · 77 points
HN discussionI wrote a book, too (career advice for new devs). I had previously written a technical ebook (about Cordova) and wanted to write something that had a longer lifespan, but was still focused on developers. Writing a technical book was great, but, like you said, it became outdated very easily. That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book.…
Comment linking /the-book/
on “Writing a book: is it worth it?”Submitted You will ask many, many questions as a story · 73 points
HN discussionI've been a consultant for about half my career and had runs of 8 years and 4 years (where I am now, so at least 4). Sticking around is harder, because there's a adrenaline rush of getting up to speed and knocking off the low hanging fruit, not to mention the salary bump. But sticking around is more rewarding in terms of long term impact, imo. In fact, I wrote a blog post about the joys of sticking around: https://l…
Comment linking /2023/08/07/the-benefits-of-sticking-around/
on “Repair and Remain (2022)”Submitted Learn to Look Around Corners as a story · 64 points
HN discussionI love RSS, and have for years. My first blog post ever was about RSS: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/4 . I recently wrote that new developers should use RSS: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/03/25/use-an-rss-rea... But reading through the post and the comments here, I'm sensing an omission. What Twitter (and social media in general) provides that RSS doesn't is interaction . I don't login to twitt…
Comment linking /2019/03/25/use-an-rss-reader/
on “RSS Is Better Than Twitter”Submitted Always leave the code better than you found it as a story · 49 points
HN discussionHear hear! I remember a senior dev at my first job being stymied by the command line; he was very adept in the IDE, but had a hard time navigating directories. It was definitely a disadvantage when it came to getting stuff done. One thing the author didn't cover is how you can share reified knowledge when you write shell scripts. (It's the same with other programming languages, but they aren't as easy to write or mo…
Comment linking /2019/02/04/learn-the-command-line/
on “Become Shell Literate”Submitted "It never gets easier, you just go faster." (2020) as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI actually like the conversational hook. Here's an article I wrote about it from a few years ago https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/02/25/use-a-conversa... But I think the post author does a great job of outlining the whole process. Key points: * have fun, try not to put pressure on yourself * get into the conversation normally * make it about the other person (but not to the point of fanboy/fangirl) * keep it…
Comment linking /2019/02/25/use-a-conversational-hook-when-networking-with-strangers/
on “The painfully shy developer's guide to networking for a better job (2017)”Submitted The Best Code Is No Code as a story · 24 points
HN discussionIt is posts like this that make me feel a bit mediocre. I have labored for two years on my blog ( https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/ ), written guest posts, given talks, and written a book. But I have nowhere near 1000 subscribers and my book announcement list was far under 100 folks. I wonder whether I am not focused enough, don't deliver enough value, targetted the wrong audience, or picked the wrong marketing pl…
Comment linking /
on “How I generated incomes as a web developer without working as a freelancer”Submitted Learn a little jq, Awk and sed as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI prefer to say "yes but" and bring the prioritization discussion front and center. I wrote more here: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/09/02/the-art-to-and...
Comment linking /2019/09/02/the-art-to-and-power-of-saying-no/
on “The care and feeding of software engineers, or why engineers are grumpy (2012)”Submitted Software is about people, not code (2020) as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI agree. I have a whole blog[0] about what I wish I had known when I was a new developer. Those "soft skills" (which are actually pretty hard) come up again and again as something I wish I'd known earlier. 0: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/
Comment linking /
on “Is 40 the New 60?”Submitted “Work will never love you back” as a story · 15 points
HN discussionThis is the one I wrote about my lessons: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/05/04/how-to-go-thro...
Comment linking /2020/05/04/how-to-go-through-a-layoff/
on “Laid off for the first time in my career, and twice in one year”Submitted I Got a Job Two Weeks After My Coding Bootcamp as a story · 13 points
HN discussionAlso relevant: the concept of skill stacking. I first ran across it here: https://forge.medium.com/how-to-become-the-best-in-the-world... That post is unfortunately now members only, but I summarized it here: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/11/28/skill-stacking...
Comment linking /2019/11/28/skill-stacking/
on “Think more about what to focus on”Submitted But First, Don’t Do the Dishes as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
