Top all-time · #11610
P.C. Maffey
Personal blog · pcmaffey.com · on HN as pcmaffeyprogrammingculture
P.C. Maffey's personal blog at pcmaffey.com covers programming and culture. Since 2017, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “Next.js Sucks; or Why I Wrote My Own SSG”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-01-18, and you can follow it by feed.
I write to "poison" AI with my ideas. Mostly about software development and being human in a computer world.
Most-linked posts?
- Next.js Sucks; or Why I Wrote My Own SSG2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-12-14
- I Closed My LinkedIn (2019)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-08
- Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-14
What Hacker News says?
Hope this helps: https://www.pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin
Comment linking /finally-i-closed-my-linkedin
on “Personal and social information of 1.2B people discovered in data leak”Submitted Finally, I Closed My LinkedIn as a story · 737 points
HN discussionYou can always roll your own basic analytics, eg https://www.pcmaffey.com/roll-your-own-analytics Doing so is extremely helpful to understanding what events and data you actually need for your use case.
Comment linking /roll-your-own-analytics
on “Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics”Submitted Roll Your Own Analytics as a story · 284 points
HN discussionFor some tasteful svg animation examples, check out my blog articles. [1] https://www.pcmaffey.com
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on “TinyVG: A challenger to the throne of vector graphics”Submitted Show HN: 5 minute word game as a story · 28 points
HN discussionI love SMIL animations. If you're curious about what you can do, here's a few examples: https://www.pcmaffey.com/roll-your-own-analytics https://www.pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin https://www.astronomer.io/404.html (let this play > 1 minute) You can open any of these images and View Source to dive in to the implementation... except for Edge, SMIL plays exactly the same in all browsers, whereas I've found…
Comment linking /finally-i-closed-my-linkedin
on “Where are all the animated SVGs?”Submitted Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics as a story · 16 points
HN discussionEnd it already. https://www.pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin
Comment linking /finally-i-closed-my-linkedin
on “Why is LinkedIn so cringe?”Submitted Origins of agile in Japanese stone masonry as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA side project for my side project: I built my own static site generator with React islands architecture and MDX support, using Bun. (Build your site from .mdx files, output only html+css, progressively hydrate the client with React only as needed). I wrote about it here: https://pcmaffey.com/custom-ssg/ Forkable template: https://github.com/pcmaffey/bun-ssg
Comment linking /custom-ssg/
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)”Submitted How Programming Shapes the Mind as a story · 3 points
HN discussionOr roll your own: https://www.pcmaffey.com/roll-your-own-analytics
Comment linking /roll-your-own-analytics
on “Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics”Submitted AInxiety as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOk here it is: https://www.pcmaffey.com/rss.xml thanks for the tip
Comment linking /rss.xml
on “Roll Your Own Analytics”Submitted Next.js Sucks; or Why I Wrote My Own SSG as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'll have to try out the bodymovin-SMIL plugin. I've long looked for a tool to generate SMIL animations, but I always end up just writing them by hand [1], which gives me much greater control... I've even wondered from time to time about building an SVG animation studio myself, as admittedly, designing and animating in code is not for everyone. [1] https://www.pcmaffey.com
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on “Lottie – Use after effects animations in web and native apps”Submitted Next.js Sucks; or Why I Wrote My Own SSG as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLink to close your account: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1379064/closi... What I wrote about closing mine: https://pcmaffey.com/finally-i-closed-my-linkedin 5 years later no regrets.
Comment linking /finally-i-closed-my-linkedin
on “LinkedIn is the worst social media I've ever seen”Submitted Counting Ghosts: A case for abandoning web analytics as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYeah those are nicely done. I like my own implementation, which overcomes the problem of limited width for the aside. In effect, its like unfolding a longer bit of the article. For example, click on the dotted yellow links here: https://www.pcmaffey.com/roll-your-own-analytics/
Comment linking /roll-your-own-analytics/
on “Tips for making writing more fun”Submitted Software is not eating the world. We are as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGreat article. Highlights the need for better tooling to create the connective fabric between personal sites. Mine: https://www.pcmaffey.com
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on “Into the Personal-Website-Verse (2019)”Submitted Softwareness as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTo carry the metaphor, iteration is not just about refactoring and optimizing, it’s mostly about debugging. Finding what isn’t working and trying something new. I wrote about how I use my programming logic to “debug my art”.* The same can be applied to writing. * https://www.pcmaffey.com/debugging-your-art
Comment linking /debugging-your-art
on “Programming and Writing”Submitted Origins of Agile in Japanese Stone Masonry as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis makes a ton of sense of for Netlify, and I hope they keep improving on it. If this existed 5 months ago I might not have rolled my own analytics using Netlify functions and Google Spreadsheets^. As it is, $9 per site, and an inability to log client-side routing make it not worth switching from my own, super customizable event-based solution (would have to come up with a new API schema for calling URLs to log sp…
Comment linking /roll-your-own-analytics
on “Netlify Analytics”Submitted Debugging Your Art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI designed my home page as a thin homage to web server root index.html pages. Though I'm most proud of my SMIL animations. https://www.pcmaffey.com
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on “Ask HN: What are some examples of well-designed personal sites?”Submitted Next.js Sucks; or Why I Wrote My Own SSG as a story · 1 points
HN discussion