Top all-time · #2531
madhadron
Personal blog · madhadron.comprogrammingscience
madhadron is a personal blog at madhadron.com about programming and science. Since 2011, 30 different Hacker News readers have linked it 53 times, most often “The seven programming ur-languages”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters cite its posts on bioinformatics file formats, the 'farewell to bioinformatics' essay, programming paradigms, and the 'seven ur-languages' piece on APL-family languages. The comments mostly reference them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The seven programming ur-languages6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-05-04
- A Farewell to Bioinformatics (2012)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-15
- A criticism of Ruby (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-18
- Protecting your hands as a programmer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-06
- The seven programming ur-languages2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-30
- A perspective on four languages (C, Common Lisp, Forth, and Haskell)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-05-23
- A farewell to bioinformatics (2012)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-20
What Hacker News says?
Thanks, I was going to make that analogy. Somehow, you can always tell when a compositor (or a band of them) hasn't explored music enough to develop their taste; and no, I don't mean that they should make ridiculous "music" like Jacob Collier's, but it does show in other ways, like a childish focus on virtuosity and improvisation. Very similar to those "I'm making my own language with blackjack and hookers" announce…
Comment linking /programming/seven_ur_languages.html
on “To become a better writer, read as much as you can”Submitted A farewell to bioinformatics (2012) as a story · 337 points
HN discussionother file formats that rival fasta in stupidity include fastq pdb bed sam cram vcf. further reading [1] > "intentionally or not, bioinformatics found a way to survive: obfuscation. By making the tools unusable, by inventing file format after file format, by seeking out the most brittle techniques" 1. https://madhadron.com/science/farewell_to_bioinformatics.htm...
Comment linking /science/farewell_to_bioinformatics.html
on “Removing newlines in FASTA file increases ZSTD compression ratio by 10x”Submitted Bayesian vs. frequentist: squabbling among the ignorant as a story · 110 points
HN discussionFunnily, I wrote my take on this not too long back: http://madhadron.com/posts/choosing_your_base_stack.html Don't be distracted by FAANG scale. It's not relevant to most software and is usually dictated by what they started using and then deployed lots of engineering time to make work. My suggestion is to figure out how you will manage your database server and monitoring for it. If you can do that, almost everythin…
Comment linking /posts/choosing_your_base_stack.html
on “Ask HN: Which configuration management software would/should you use in 2020?”Submitted A perspective on four languages (C, Common Lisp, Forth, and Haskell) as a story · 82 points
HN discussionI have found that most folks who have not written a novel but feel that they would like to have a useless preoccupation with process. A novelist's process is how their habits of mind were adapted to the problems of writing an account of a social simulation that is too large to hold in your head at once (i.e., a novel). For example, I'm not comfortable starting a work without knowing how it will end. It's a psycholog…
Comment linking /monologue-sample.html
on “How to Write a Novel”Submitted A criticism of Ruby (2013) as a story · 69 points
HN discussion> From my perspective I am glad that happened, I was excessively ambitious, comparing myself with the great ones in the field, measured my self-worth on regard of my ability to solve problems. This is something that I have observed in the sciences: a pernicious, unquestioned, and false great man theory of how science progresses (I wrote about it a little more here: http://madhadron.com/into_the_sciences-sample.html…
Comment linking /into_the_sciences-sample.html
on “In the foundations of physics we haven't seen progress for the past four decades”Submitted The seven programming ur-languages as a story · 54 points
HN discussionI settled on 0 based indexing as the right way to go when I was doing this calculation: https://madhadron.com/posts/2009-07-17-determining-affine-tr... When you start calculating offsets and transformations of coordinates, starting at 1 forces you to carry around extra additive constants everywhere.
Comment linking /posts/2009-07-17-determining-affine-transforms-from-three-points.html
on “Again on 0-based vs. 1-based indexing”Submitted Public comments considered harmful as a story · 45 points
HN discussionWith age and humility has your view of the field tempered with time from "Fuck you, bioinformatics. Eat shit and die."[1]? I totally get your point, and it maddens me daily but I take the interesting + meaningful work/money tradeoff and enjoy being one of the best coders in a building (much harder in pure tech) [1] http://madhadron.com/posts/2012-03-26-a-farewell-to-bioinfor...
Comment linking /posts/2012-03-26-a-farewell-to-bioinformatics.html
on “Biology Is Eating the World”Submitted A criticism of Ruby as a story · 7 points
HN discussionp-values are two way decision procedures. For historical reasons we report the critical value of the type I error, because that was the piece people figured out before we got decision theory and the Neyman-Pearson lemma. All the null hypothesis vs other hypothesis stuff is distractions from the basic fact of choosing between two decisions based on data. I wrote an explanation for clinicians a while back that I peopl…
Comment linking /posts/2016-01-25-p_values_for_clinicians.html
on “Statisticians want to abandon science’s standard measure of ‘significance’”Submitted Getting Better at Software Engineering as a story · 3 points
HN discussionTry monitoring your energy level. I ran this experiment on myself ( http://madhadron.com/?p=254 ) with very useful results. I know that my energy level drops like a rock at 16h and doesn't really come back until about 20h. So I take care of stuff that doesn't require massive energy in that gap and try to protect my second energy burst of the day for getting other stuff done. As for the articles you've emailed yourse…
Comment linking /?p=254
on “Ask HN: How do you stay productive after work?”Submitted Show HN: Into the Sciences as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> I still don't have the first clue what a "Monad" is This is the simplest way I have yet found to think about them: http://madhadron.com/posts/2013-12-05-email-about_monads.htm...
Comment linking /posts/2013-12-05-email-about_monads.html
on “Why Are So Many Developers Hating on Object-Oriented Programming?”Submitted A farewell to bioinformatics (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThese are still hotly debated and one paradigm is hardly 'waning' compared to the other. I think when you say "non-compiled, non-statically-typed" you actually mean "dynamically-dispatched." This page: http://madhadron.com/?p=191 popped up on HN a while ago and talks about this, the author talks about how dynamic dispatch lets you create and mold the language as you see fit -- "language as medium." It's not a better…
Comment linking /?p=191
on “Engineering hints you'll rarely hear”Submitted The problem with Silicon Valley’s libertarians as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhat makes something a science is actually a good question, and most practicing scientists don't have a good answer for that because they have only seen their own field, which is shaped by the peculiarities of its topic of study. I didn't have a clear view until I had been through three or four fields and spent several years resolving my mental dissonance. I [wrote a book]( http://madhadron.com/into_the_sciences-sam…
Comment linking /into_the_sciences-sample.html
on “The impossibility—and the necessity—of distinguishing science from nonscience”Submitted A Criticism of Ruby as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI wrote a couple papers for clinicians introducing p-values and the necessary apparatus to understand them correctly: http://madhadron.com/posts/2016-01-25-p_values_for_clinician...
Comment linking /posts/2016-01-25-p_values_for_clinicians.html
on “What's the significance of 0.05 significance? (2013)”Submitted The seven programming ur-languages as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou can do the calculations, certainly. Here's conservation of energy: http://madhadron.com/posts/2009-04-27-conservation-of-energy... Does that explain Noether's theorem? Not in an abstract setting. And for high school students? I don't know. The calculations require a fairly solid grasp of calculus.
Comment linking /posts/2009-04-27-conservation-of-energy.html
on “Symmetries: The Beauty in Physics”Submitted Imperative to Relational as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI don't know, I still remember this from HN: http://madhadron.com/a-farewell-to-bioinformatics
Comment linking /a-farewell-to-bioinformatics
on “Ask HN: Where are the hard programming challenges/jobs?”Submitted How to store images in your database as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
