Top all-time · #2686
Marcus' Blog
Personal blog · mbuffett.com/postsprogramminggames
Marcus' Blog is a personal blog at mbuffett.com about programming and games. Since 2014, 28 different Hacker News readers have linked it 65 times, most often “Compressing Chess Moves Even Further, to 3.7 Bits per Move”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Marcus Buffett's posts on compressing chess moves, a Bevy snake game tutorial, structural code editors, chess improvement tips, and tacit knowledge in programming.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Just a blog
Most-linked posts?
- Compressing Chess Moves Even Further, to 3.7 Bits per Move6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2024-03-15
- How Much of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Can You Fit on a QR Code?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-03-28
- Making a Snake Clone with Bevy3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-10-17
- The 2030 Rust Update3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-28
- An Incomplete Explanation of the Proc Macro That Saved Me 4000 Lines of Rust3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-05
- Improving in chess is hard. I built the most human-like chess AI to help me3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-02
- An honest review of my last year building Chessbook2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-12-27
- Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-10-07
- Thoughts on Structured Editing: Breaking Away from Syntax2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-27
- Unironically using Kubernetes for my personal blog2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-17
What Hacker News says?
huh, I originally thought this would create unusually long URLs, but if it's just the sequence of moves it could stay pretty small. might more fun too, representing each state of play instead of just the board position. Also easily compressible if size is an issue: https://mbuffett.com/posts/compressing-chess-moves Would also mean all rules can be represented, and you'd be able to do cool things like highlight the p…
Comment linking /posts/compressing-chess-moves
on “Static Chess”Submitted A bunch of programming advice I'd give to myself 15 years ago as a story · 544 points
HN discussionShameless plug, I wrote a snake tutorial for bevy that’s become pretty popular, and just updated it for 0.6. https://mbuffett.com/posts/bevy-snake-tutorial/
Comment linking /posts/bevy-snake-tutorial/
on “Bevy game engine 0.6”Submitted Managing my motivation as a solo dev as a story · 336 points
HN discussion> Cannot make a type in a foreign package implement an interface I would only push back on this point, and this point alone. Sure, it would be very convenient for me, an author to be able to just extend the implementation of anything that I import. However, when I am not an author and am instead a reader of code, doing this is the number-one way to causally make code totally unreadable. By allowing anyone to extend…
Comment linking /posts/bevy-snake-tutorial/
on “Experience Report: 6 months of Go”Submitted Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months as a story · 321 points
HN discussionOh, related in this space: https://mbuffett.com/posts/structured-editing-syntax/ I thought this blog post had an interesting idea too. Basically that a structural editor which truly knew the underlying AST could then alter the visual representation of the code entirely. Eg changing it to look like Python, or whatever insane thing. Not advocating for that of course, but the idea that the editor could be effectively t…
Comment linking /posts/structured-editing-syntax/
on “The evolution of a structural code editor”Submitted Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time as a story · 312 points
HN discussionFor everyone who's following this awesome tutorial has been updated: https://mbuffett.com/posts/bevy-snake-tutorial/
Comment linking /posts/bevy-snake-tutorial/
on “Bevy 0.7: data oriented game engine built in Rust”Submitted Unironically using Kubernetes for my personal blog as a story · 266 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in the author's follow up post where they reach 3.7 bits/move after compression. https://mbuffett.com/posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-furt...
Comment linking /posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-further/
on “Compressing chess moves for fun and profit”Submitted Compressing chess moves for fun and profit as a story · 179 points
HN discussionI did end up doing something like this: https://mbuffett.com/posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-furt... You’re spot on about the performance reason I didn’t want to do this originally, but I did some testing and turns out move generation in the library I use is Blazing Fast and wouldn’t be a bottleneck
Comment linking /posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-further/
on “Compressing chess moves for fun and profit”Submitted A made-up name is better than no name as a story · 62 points
HN discussionI mention Huffman in my follow-up post: https://mbuffett.com/posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-furt... , but chose arithmetic encoding instead.
Comment linking /posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-further/
on “Compressing chess moves for fun and profit”Submitted Making a Snake Clone with Bevy as a story · 60 points
HN discussionYour intuition here is right on the money. I wrote a subsequent post with pretty much that exact approach: https://mbuffett.com/posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-furt...
Comment linking /posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-further/
on “Compressing chess moves for fun and profit”Submitted Spending 10 months building the most human-like chess bot as a story · 34 points
HN discussionThat's exactly what the author seems to have done and describes in their subsequent post: https://mbuffett.com/posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-furt... (published yesterday)
Comment linking /posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-further/
on “Compressing chess moves for fun and profit”Submitted Unironically Using Kubernetes for My Personal Blog as a story · 7 points
HN discussionRelated follow-up from same author: Compressing Chess Moves Even Further, To 3.7 Bits Per Move https://mbuffett.com/posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-furt...
Comment linking /posts/compressing-chess-moves-even-further/
on “Compressing chess moves for fun and profit”Submitted The 2030 Rust Update as a story · 6 points
HN discussionHere's a previous post outlining more about how the model works, whereas this post is more about how well it has turned out. https://mbuffett.com/posts/chess-move-prediction/
Comment linking /posts/chess-move-prediction/
on “Spending 10 months building the most human-like chess bot”Submitted The 2030 Rust Update as a story · 6 points
HN discussionhttps://mbuffett.com/posts/qr-code-hitchhikers-guide/
Comment linking /posts/qr-code-hitchhikers-guide/
on “Ask HN: How to store large amounts of data on paper with QR code like tech?”Submitted Compressing Chess Moves Even Further, to 3.7 Bits per Move as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI liked these tips: https://mbuffett.com/posts/chess_improvement_thoughts/
Comment linking /posts/chess_improvement_thoughts/
on “What is Chess? What to think and how long for”Submitted It’s probably not just chess and language. How much potential is thrown away? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe Tacit Dimension , Michael Polanyi, 1966 https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo603536... Programming and Tacit Knowledge https://mbuffett.com/posts/all-tacit-knowledge/ Tacit Knowledge blogpost series , Commoncog https://commoncog.com/the-tacit-knowledge-series/ Acquiring and Sharing Tacit Knowledge in Software Development , 2013 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264125152_Acquiring...
Comment linking /posts/all-tacit-knowledge/
on “Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies”Submitted Improving in chess is hard. I built the most human-like chess AI to help as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
