Top all-time · #667
Mike Perham
Personal blog · mikeperham.comprogrammingstartups
Mike Perham's personal blog at mikeperham.com covers programming and startups. Since 2010, 94 different Hacker News readers have linked it 138 times, most often “How to Charge for Your Open Source”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (29) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mike Perham's blog for posts on dependencies, open-core business models, and Sidekiq and Ruby performance. Most links are cited as background.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called 'a gem', 'valuable' (two posts), and worth a look; one commenter calls its author 'amazing'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 29 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ruby, OSS and the Internet
Most-linked posts?
- How to Charge for Your Open Source5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-11-23
- How to make $100k in OSS by working hard4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-10-01
- Use Runit4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-07-07
- Sidekiq in the Terminal3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-11
- Happy 10th Birthday, Sidekiq3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-17
- CGI: Ruby's Bare Metal3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-10-18
- Kill Your Dependencies3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-02-09
- Taming Rails memory bloat3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-04-25
- /2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-03-23
- How to Charge for your Open Source (2015)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-09-26
What Hacker News says?
I wanted to write this post after the left-pad debacle but I've been beaten to it. I think we got to this state because everyone was optimizing js code for load time-- include only what you need, use closure compiler when it matters, etc. For front end development, this makes perfect sense. Somewhere along the line, front end developers forgot about closure compiler, decided lodash was too big, and decided to do man…
Comment linking /2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies/
on “NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?”Submitted Kill Your Dependencies as a story · 409 points
HN discussionI blog regularly but typically not about business topics, see my blog home page at https://www.mikeperham.com I appear on various podcasts, e.g. The Changelog, regularly and talk about things there too. I'll be on FounderQuest in the next week or two.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself”Submitted How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard as a story · 316 points
HN discussionI wrote sidekiq.org starting 8 years ago and blogged about my experiences over time, e.g. https://www.mikeperham.com/2012/08/26/the-sidekiq-experiment... I sell closed source Pro and Enterprise focused feature packs for my OSS projects. This is known as "open core". My first full year in 2013 I sold $85k. I'm in the millions ARR now.
Comment linking /2012/08/26/the-sidekiq-experiment-part-i/
on “Ask HN: Dear open source devs how do you sustain yourself”Submitted Happy 10th Birthday, Sidekiq as a story · 211 points
HN discussionI am reminded of this gem: https://www.mikeperham.com/2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies...
Comment linking /2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies/
on “Our Software Dependency Problem”Submitted Faktory, a new background job system as a story · 194 points
HN discussionMike Perham in 2016: https://www.mikeperham.com/2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies...
Comment linking /2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies/
on “Never use a dependency that you could replace with an afternoon of programming”Submitted A Path to Full-time Open Source as a story · 129 points
HN discussionI agree. Here is a similar post from another amazing developer. https://www.mikeperham.com/2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies...
Comment linking /2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies/
on “Build It Yourself”Submitted Ruby’s GIL and transactional memory as a story · 82 points
HN discussionGreat talk! The last question you received about how the python memcache client handles distributing keys after adding a node (rather than removing one) would've been interesting to know, but no sweat. Looks like somebody explains how this is handled for the ruby client: https://www.mikeperham.com/2009/01/14/consistent-hashing-in-...
Comment linking /2009/01/14/consistent-hashing-in-memcache-client/
on “PyCon US 2014 – Videos”Submitted Inspeqtor: easy application infrastructure monitoring as a story · 77 points
HN discussionTell the horde OSS != FOSS and also get off their entitlement horse. By opening your source you’re already in the minority contributing to common good, openly sharing your understanding of how to solve problems with code (aka IP). Making IP free is a big deal — you’re making it free to learn, understand, and advance shared knowledge. You don’t owe anyone making it free to run a business on. To head off an AWS vs. El…
Comment linking /2015/11/23/how-to-charge-for-your-open-source/
on “Demonopolizing the Internet with Interoperability”Submitted Five Common Rails Mistakes as a story · 77 points
HN discussionYours also sounds like a "non-statement statement" e.g.: https://www.mikeperham.com/2013/12/31/rubys-gil-and-transact...
Comment linking /2013/12/31/rubys-gil-and-transactional-memory
on “Errata prompt Intel to disable TSX in Haswell, early Broadwell CPUs”Submitted The Ruby Stdlib is a Ghetto as a story · 71 points
HN discussionOn the subject of OSS projects on the side, I'm really interested in the dual licensing model - I'd like to have my code licensed under a strict copyleft license so people can see the code, but a more permissive license so businesses can use it. Based on articles like http://www.mikeperham.com/2015/11/23/how-to-charge-for-your-... I've figured out the following: OSS license - AGPL - I'm building web services distrib…
Comment linking /2015/11/23/how-to-charge-for-your-open-source/
on “Turning a side project into an open-source project”Submitted Timeout: Ruby's Most Dangerous API as a story · 67 points
HN discussionPlease re-read what I said. I never claimed it was easy to port in every situation. I merely pointed out that " depending on what you are doing they (semantic differences) are minor considerations." and then gave an example where that was the case with a simple application I was working. If you want a more complicted library that was ported from Ruby to Crystal then you can also look at Sidekiq ( https://www.mikeper…
Comment linking /2016/05/25/sidekiq-for-crystal/
on “How Shopify implemented its secure authentication service”Submitted CGI: Ruby's Bare Metal as a story · 64 points
HN discussionRelated: Railsconf 2020 Virtual Hallway - https://www.mikeperham.com/2020/04/29/railsconf-2020-virtual...
Comment linking /2020/04/29/railsconf-2020-virtual-hallway/
on “RailsConf 2020 Couch Edition”Submitted Ruby Stdlib is a Ghetto, Pt. 2 as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI built a billing site for my software business and had to decide which tech to use. SPA? React + Rails? Elixir? Keep in mind we are talking about single digit req/min. I went with CGI. It has some drawbacks but consider the advantages: * Requires nothing but Apache running, minimizes attack surface area * Deploy is a simple `git pull`, no services to restart * No app server running 24/7 so I don't have to monitor m…
Comment linking /2015/01/05/cgi-rubys-bare-metal/
on “What Were CGI Scripts?”Submitted Optimizing Sidekiq as a story · 43 points
HN discussionThere has been lots of discussion lately about Ruby and malloc. jemalloc gives the best results for Server Performance and memory usage [1], but is slightly slower in low memory usage scenario i.e Non Server usage which is popular in Japan. But jemalloc sometimes ( Not sure if this is still the case ) doesn't work well with muslc, used in Alpine Linux. The Ruby Core team has decided against [2] shipping jemalloc by…
Comment linking /2018/04/25/taming-rails-memory-bloat/
on “Testing Memory Allocators: ptmalloc2 vs. tcmalloc vs. hoard vs. jemalloc”Submitted Sidekiq 7.0 as a story · 41 points
HN discussionMost buy for the features. It's hard for a business to justify giving money to someone for nothing. I'm a big fan of selling something tangible, even if rather minor, rather than just a license. My guess is that I'd have 25% of my current sales if I just sold support/license. I started Sidekiq Pro with just two major features: batches and metrics. http://www.mikeperham.com/2012/10/01/say-hello-to-sidekiq-pr... The r…
Comment linking /2012/10/01/say-hello-to-sidekiq-pro/
on “Ask HN: Do you get paid to contribute to a open source project?”Submitted Introducing Phat, a new approach to asynchronous Rails apps as a story · 36 points
HN discussion
