Top all-time · #3792
Max Stoiber
Personal blog · mxstbr.com · on HN as mxstbrprogrammingweb
Max Stoiber's personal blog at mxstbr.com covers programming and web. Since 2017, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 26 times, most often “Tech Choices I Regret at Spectrum”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite Max Stoiber's posts on Spectrum's tech-choice regrets and on Tailwind as sources for points about Next.js, Postgres and Tailwind. No comment judges the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A few things about Max Stoiber, and a few things he believes.
Most-linked posts?
- Tech Choices I Regret at Spectrum5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-01-16
- Why I Love Tailwind3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-12-07
- You probably don't need GraphQL2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-11
- Use spacer components instead of CSS margins (2020)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-03-24
- /thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-01-22
- How to Have Great Taste2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-21
What Hacker News says?
I've started offering a service like this[0] for React apps. The response so far has been really good, people love it! It's exactly how you say it is, by spending some time identifying the biggest issues and then spending an hour with the team I can get them to rally around some easy fixes that'll be valuable for the business long-term. Developers love it as their bosses finally understand the value of refactoring,…
Comment linking /audits/
on “Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?”Submitted Tech Choices I Regret at Spectrum as a story · 309 points
HN discussionI've been having a lot of fun building a digital garden for my WIP notes into my personal website: https://mxstbr.com/notes/digital-garden My quests (goals) with this digital garden are: 1. Publish more than I did when I just had space for essays, which hopefully leads to… 2. Getting more input from people on my ideas 3. And have fun futzing with my digital garden technically So far, so good!
Comment linking /notes/digital-garden
on “Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?”Submitted Why I Love Tailwind as a story · 266 points
HN discussionI've been using Fig for months now and it's become a must-have on my machine. I particularly love the git branch, npm package and yarn command autocompletion — my previous zsh plugin didn't have those and I use them all day every day. Disclaimer: I invested in Fig recently because I'm such a fan.[0] [0]: https://mxstbr.com/investing
Comment linking /investing
on “Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal”Submitted Use spacer components instead of CSS margins (2020) as a story · 206 points
HN discussionFyi, the article's title and sibling top-level comment by austincheney may give the wrong impression of what Russ Cox is talking about. His essay is not saying software dependencies itself is a problem. Instead, he's saying software dependencies _evaluation_ methodology is the problem. He could have titled it more explicitly as "Our Software Dependency Evaluation Problem" . So, the premise of the essay is already pa…
Comment linking /thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum/
on “Our Software Dependency Problem”Submitted Why I Write CSS in JavaScript as a story · 195 points
HN discussionI've been enjoying reading Spectrum's codebase[0]. It's very simple, with little documentation you can understand pretty much what is going on and in the architecture level, is as simple as it needs. The first time I tried to open a PR, I was up and running my feature in a few minutes. Small summary of the features I liked: - Simple documentation - Intuitive structure - Lots of JS best practices, but still simple -…
Comment linking /thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum/
on “Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?”Submitted Margin considered harmful as a story · 124 points
HN discussionThanks blorenz! When working with Max, I was surprised how little he cared which library we use to get the job done. In fact, he's also a big fan of it. [0] To be fair, we use the Tailwind system, but a lot of customizations on top. [0] https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tailwind/
Comment linking /thoughts/tailwind/
on “Show HN: GraphCDN – GraphQL CDN with edge caching and analytics”Submitted You probably don't need GraphQL as a story · 31 points
HN discussionThat does make a lot of sense. I suppose the barrier to entry is a lot lower with Discord. To answer your question it's just a web app so it works on any platform. [1] The author talked a while ago how he regretted not building it with react-native-web. [2] (I'm not affiliated with Spectrum) [1] https://github.com/withspectrum/spectrum [2] https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum
Comment linking /thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum
on “Dark Horse Discord”Submitted How to be better at making decisions as a story · 24 points
HN discussionThe spectrum chat team, which GitHub acquired, wrote that they wish they had started with next.js https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum/
Comment linking /thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum/
on “Ask HN: What happened to server-side rendering?”Submitted Margin Considered Harmful as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI moved my newsletter[0] from Mailchimp to Buttondown[1] and have been very happy. The price is much cheaper, and Buttondown does exactly what I need it to do: manage my list of subscribers and send emails reliably. As the cherries on top I can compose my emails in markdown and their public API is nice to use. Highly recommended for personal newsletter needs! [0]: https://mxstbr.com/thoughts [1]: https://buttondown.…
Comment linking /thoughts
on “Mailchimp changes definition of “audience” to include unsubscribed emails”Submitted You probably don't need GraphQL as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWe were using Slate at Spectrum[0] back in 2017/2018, eventually switched to DraftJS due to cross-browser issues but that was honestly equally frustrating to use and support across many browsers. In hindsight, we should've just had a GitHub-style markdown editor: https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum It sounds like the situation has improved since then! I'll definitely try Tiptap if I ever need…
Comment linking /thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum
on “Switching Rich Text Editors, Part 1: Picking Tiptap”Submitted How to Have Great Taste as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhile I'd take the metrics they talk about with a big grain of salt (they heavily depend on the specific startup being evaluated), the round sizes are in the right ballpark. Our[0] actual round sizes were: 1. Pre-seed: $1M (led by System.One) 2. Seed: $4M (led by Boldstart) 3. Series A: $25M (led by Tiger Global) Note that all of these were all raised in 2021 & 2022 before the investment market crash, but even now I…
Comment linking /investing
on “Fundraising Stages Defined (Angel/Pre-Seed/Seed/Series A) – Incisive Ventures”Submitted How to Have Great Taste as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wouldn't: https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum/ Just use Postgres.
Comment linking /thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum/
on “Ask HN: Anyone Using RethinkDB in Production?”Submitted Spectrum: Tech Choices I Regret as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLearning tailwind is 30 mins in their online playground. (It’s one traffic jam on your commute.) There are countless blog posts and threads listing the advantages, but it’s better to spend that time using it and you won’t have to take someone’s word for it! From the creator of styled components himself: https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tailwind/
Comment linking /thoughts/tailwind/
on “Tailwind CSS v3.3”Submitted I run gratitude circles (2025) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
