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Lost in Technopolis
Personal blog · newartisans.comprogrammingwriting
Lost in Technopolis is a personal blog at newartisans.com about programming and writing. Since 2007, 49 different Hacker News readers have linked it 58 times, most often “Git==Blobs+Trees+Commits+nothingelse Learn Git from the bottom up”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Git==Blobs+Trees+Commits+nothingelse Learn Git from the bottom up5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-03-26
- Git from the bottom up4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-01-09
- Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp (2009)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-04-14
- Letter to the FSF3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-06-28
- Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-03-14
- Parsing with Haskell and Attoparsec2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-30
- /software/readylisp.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-01-14
- My Claude Code Toolkit2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-14
What Hacker News says?
For me the best Git guide is John Wiegley's "Git from the bottom up" @ http://newartisans.com/2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up/
Comment linking /2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up/
on “A simple guide for getting started with git”Submitted Monads in pictures as a story · 98 points
HN discussionAlso greatly worth reading: “Git from the Bottom Up”: * HTML version: https://jwiegley.github.io/git-from-the-bottom-up/ * PDF version: http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf (via http://newartisans.com/2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up/ ) The great thing is that after reading and understanding these, one's mental model matches the reality of the Git program, so one can both try bolder things, and get un…
Comment linking /2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up/
on “The Architecture of Git (2012)”Submitted Parsing with Haskell and Attoparsec as a story · 77 points
HN discussionGit commands are not consistent. This is a result of it growing organically, and having a maintainer who strongly values backwards compatibility. But you know, having used git for years that doesn't bother me. Let me explain. Git is conceptually straightforward[1]. It is difficult if not impossible to discern those concepts from its baroque CLI. So learning git from its built-in help and/or man pages is suboptimal i…
Comment linking /2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up/
on “Git koans”Submitted Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp (2009) as a story · 74 points
HN discussionHere is the unencumbered and original link for that: http://www.newartisans.com/2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up.ht...
Comment linking /2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up.html
on “Understanding Git”Submitted Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp as a story · 68 points
HN discussionIt is not the language per se, but the tools around it that makes it amazing. After years hearing about org-mode, three months ago I finally decided to try it out. Here is how it went. I started simple. First I watched a short tutorial which gave me the overall idea [1]. Then, I created a simple todo.org file and started fiddling with it. You add lists with * and nests them with more * * Project ** Code *** TODO Ema…
Comment linking /2007/08/using-org-mode-as-a-day-planner/
on “Org-mode reference card [pdf]”Submitted Using Git as a versioned data store in Python as a story · 34 points
HN discussionI agree that the only way to truly understand Git (which I am still a long way off from) is to understand how it works. Otherwise it really is totally incomprehensible. Two resources that helped me a lot were the "Git magic" link at the end of the article, and "Git from the bottom up" ( http://www.newartisans.com/2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up.ht... ). Well worth reading, you'll realise just how simple Git really is…
Comment linking /2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up.html
on “The git parable”Submitted Git from the bottom up as a story · 24 points
HN discussionFor OS X, Ready Lisp is the closest I have seen to what you describe. http://www.newartisans.com/blog/ready-lisp.html It's Aquamacs combined with SBCL, some documentation, and some should-be-standard CL libraries. Double click and it immediately takes you into a REPL. Aquamacs recognizes most of the usual Mac key bindings, making the Emacs curve not quite so steep.
Comment linking /blog/ready-lisp.html
on “Clojure: 1, Common Lisp: 0”Submitted Git==Blobs+Trees+Commits+nothingelse Learn Git from the bottom up as a story · 21 points
HN discussionThe comments of this article include a lengthy and interesting reply by Daniel Weinreb (of MIT Lisp Machine and Symbolics fame): http://newartisans.com/2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye-lisp/#c... The author's reply to Weinreb can be found here: http://newartisans.com/2009/03/the-jvm-and-costs-vs-benefits
Comment linking /2009/03/the-jvm-and-costs-vs-benefits
on “Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp (2009)”Submitted Running Hunchentoot behind Apache as a story · 19 points
HN discussionIt's interesting to read old introductory posts like this, and then look ahead at future blog posts to see how his opinion evolved. He still loves Haskell: http://newartisans.com/category/haskell/
Comment linking /category/haskell/
on “Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp (2009)”Submitted Common Lisp web servers as a story · 18 points
HN discussionhttp://wincent.com/a/about/wincent/weblog/archives/2007/07/g... short and sweet: no metadata http://www.newartisans.com/blog_files/diving.into.git.php http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2008/03/05/cleanly-migra... You used to be able to call "git", no options, it would tell you how many commands it has. "wc" says 140!
Comment linking /blog_files/diving.into.git.php
on “Git: the minimum you need to know (sorta like a cheat or nutshell)”Submitted Letter to the FSF as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThe first line of the abstract reminds me of some recent work allowing plain Haskell functions to be sent to the Z3 theorem prover/SMT program: http://newartisans.com/2017/04/haskell-and-z3/ It leverages some cool work of Conal Elliott that develops (formulas in) cartesian closed categories into something like an "intermediate representation" for functional language compilation. http://conal.net/blog/posts/haskell-t…
Comment linking /2017/04/haskell-and-z3/
on “Chasing diagrams in cryptography (2016)”Submitted FP techniques in Lisp: Data sharing as a story · 16 points
HN discussionIf you use Emacs, it's particularly easy to learn them by experimenting with M-x re-builder. Hey! I did not know about this, and it looks really useful. I've used http://www.newartisans.com/blog_files/regex.tool.for.emacs.p... and it's good, but not as well integrated. I wish I knew a better way to get a survey of what's available in the Emacs world - something that would have clued me in to this command, for exampl…
Comment linking /blog_files/regex.tool.for.emacs.php
on “5 Regular Expressions Every Web Programmer Should Know”Submitted How laziness changes thinking in Haskell as a story · 15 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in what John Wiegley had to say on the subject (in particular, Haskell has no macros; is this bad?) a couple of months ago: http://www.newartisans.com/2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye-lis... The comments below the article also have some interesting and relevant things to say.
Comment linking /2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye-lisp.html
on “Ask HN: Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language?”Submitted Ready Lisp version 20090130 now available as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThe article "Git from the bottom up" has also helped me understand git. http://www.newartisans.com/2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up.ht...
Comment linking /2008/04/git-from-the-bottom-up.html
on “How I Learnt Git”Submitted Hello Haskell, Goodbye Lisp (2009) as a story · 12 points
HN discussionDid anyone else notice this on the same site? http://www.newartisans.com/blog_files/ready.lisp.on.osx.php Zero fuss way to get started with Common Lisp on Mac OS X. Aquamacs bundled with SBCL, launches immediately into REPL at startup. I will recommend this to anyone who wants to learn Lisp on the Mac.
Comment linking /blog_files/ready.lisp.on.osx.php
on “Running Hunchentoot behind Apache”Submitted Implementing Löb's Theorem in Emacs Lisp as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
