Top all-time · #8958
Mark Downie
Personal blog · poppastring.com/blogprogrammingcareer
Mark Downie writes PoppaString, a personal blog at poppastring.com about programming and career. Since 2018, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times, most often “What We Lost the Last Time Code Got Cheap”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN links Mark Downie's blog for a post comparing AI's risks with what was lost during an earlier technological shift. The only comment cites it as support for a point about AI and cognitive debt.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about making software.
Most-linked posts?
- What We Lost the Last Time Code Got Cheap2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-08
- Color‑Driven Code Navigation2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-22
What Hacker News says?
this author suggest its essentially the same risk https://www.poppastring.com/blog/what-we-lost-the-last-time-... . i feel its heightened because execs and leaders are absolutely salivating over the opportunity to fire thousands of humans with no regard for the cognitive debt that comes from outsourcing thinking to ai.
Comment linking /blog/what-we-lost-the-last-time-code-got-cheap
on “Mitchellh – I strongly believe there are entire companies now under AI psychosis”Submitted Reversing the effects of long programming sessions as a story · 173 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Unread Proof as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is that position available for remote? (2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Time Travel Debugging in Azure as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Tool Is Not the Author as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted AI Splits the Market as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What We Lost the Last Time Code Got Cheap as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Color‑Driven Code Navigation as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Color‑Driven Code Navigation as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted High performing developer teams are all alike as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using Visual Studio for Crash Dump Debugging as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
