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Paul Stadig
Personal blog · paul.stadig.nameprogrammingphilosophy
Paul Stadig's personal blog at paul.stadig.name covers programming and philosophy. Since 2009, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “Thou Shalt Not Lie: git rebase, ammend, squash, and other lies ”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Paul Stadig's posts on git history, including one arguing against rewriting commits with rebase and squash. They are cited in discussions about whether to squash commits and how history should look.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
a tinkerer in the art and science of computing machines
Most-linked posts?
- Thou Shalt Not Lie: git rebase, ammend, squash, and other lies 5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-12-07
What Hacker News says?
It depends somewhat on your perspective. Some people like to lie, and others do not[1]. Personally, I don't mind lying a bit in my personal projects. To lie, you simply make a new branch for each feature or otherwise related changeset such as a hotfix. Within that branch, you make as many commits as you want, the more the merrier. When the branch is ready to merge, you use "git merge --squash branchname" which will…
Comment linking /2010/12/thou-shalt-not-lie-git-rebase-ammend.html
on “I'm a serial over committer”Submitted Thou Shalt Not Lie: git rebase, ammend, squash, and other lies as a story · 40 points
HN discussionIs there a big performance boost for squashing when rebasing? Is it just housekeeping? I like what Paul Stadig had to say on the topic http://paul.stadig.name/2010/12/thou-shalt-not-lie-git-rebas...
Comment linking /2010/12/thou-shalt-not-lie-git-rebase-ammend.html
on “Bye Bye SVN, Hello Git”Submitted An experiment in combining Clojure and Terracotta as a story · 22 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thou Shalt Not Lie: git rebase, ammend, squash, and other lies as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Flerb Paradox as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thou Shalt Not Lie: Git rebase, amend, squash, and other lies as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Distributed Team doesn't mean a "Remote Team" as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Programming of Philosophy as a story · 1 points
HN discussion