Top all-time · #3846
Peter Christensen
Personal blog · pchristensen.com/blog · on HN as pchristensenprogrammingculture
Peter Christensen's personal blog at pchristensen.com covers programming and culture. Since 2007, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 104 times, most often “List of Companies Currently Using Lisp and Scheme - please help me expand it”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-07-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Peter Christensen's blog for its list of companies using Lisp in production and for a review of Michael Ellsberg's book on college-educated unemployment. Comments only link these posts.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- List of Companies Currently Using Lisp and Scheme - please help me expand it4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2007-12-20
- How To Learn Lisp3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-03-04
- Hacker vs Engineer - Know The Difference!2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-03-06
- Why We’re Not In A Startup Bubble2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-03-03
- Can Y Combinator Be Beaten At Its Own Game?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-04-08
- A Closed Apple Platform is Inevitable But Temporary2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-01-28
- /blog/lisp-companies/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-07
- What Kind of Software Would People Actually Pay For?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-05-05
- Pumping Startup Iron: Be an Arnold, Not a Lou2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-02-07
What Hacker News says?
Pedestal Client from Cognitect did this - see https://github.com/pedestal/app-tutorial/wiki/Parallel-Proce... and my notes at http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/pedestal-tutorial-part... (under "Parallel Processing"). Too bad they stopped working on it.
Comment linking /blog/articles/pedestal-tutorial-part-2-notes/
on “First Impressions Using React Native”Submitted Advice to a college sophomore programmer as a story · 61 points
HN discussionHere’s a write up of an experiment I did, with idea, spec, prompt, and Claude code commits. http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/first-impressions-of-v...
Comment linking /blog/articles/first-impressions-of-vibe-coding/
on “Getting good results from Claude Code”Submitted Critical Fans (or how Mixergy did the Impossible) as a story · 52 points
HN discussionI believe it uses nrepl, not SWANK. (I wrote about the difference here: http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/clojure-development-ec... )
Comment linking /blog/articles/clojure-development-ecosystem/
on “A new Light Table experience”Submitted Hey language snobs: don't pinch pennies as a story · 43 points
HN discussionRelevant link: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/category/polyphasi... I loved it but my life didn't accommodate it. It was much easier on work days because I could sleep both ways on the train, one nap in the middle of the day, and then make it through family duties at night before I needed another nap. My wife didn't enjoy the scheduling difficulties on the weekend and it's not something you can switch on…
Comment linking /blog/articles/category/polyphasic/
on “Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye”Submitted How To Learn Lisp as a story · 34 points
HN discussionAnd... Hacker News. I can't find it now, but I'm pretty sure pg talked about how Hacker News was, at least initially, REPL-centric (not in those words) EDIT: http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/are-you-this-agile-pau... > This is a step beyond that. I'm not even doing releases; I've been pasting the changes into the running server's repl. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99586 Obviously it's a bit extreme to b…
Comment linking /blog/articles/are-you-this-agile-paul-graham-changes-hacker-news-while-you-wait/
on “Introduction to OCaml”Submitted Ultimate N00b SLIME/Emacs Cheat Sheet as a story · 30 points
HN discussionyeah but this list was started for CL. At that time we only had http://pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/ , and people giving the same 3 examples. Clojure always had good promotion and it already has https://clojure.org/community/companies
Comment linking /blog/lisp-companies/
on “Companies that use Lisp extensively”Submitted Chrome, the Google Docs-mobile as a story · 26 points
HN discussionI made a list a while ago but it's a couple years out of date. It's probably a big underestimate because I last updated it before Clojure started to boom. I'll add anything people mention in this thread and if anyone knows more, email peter @ pchristensen . com http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/
Comment linking /blog/lisp-companies/
on “How I lost my faith in Lisp”Submitted List of Companies Currently Using Lisp and Scheme - please help me expand it as a story · 26 points
HN discussionAgain, here is the link to my experience doing polyphasic sleep: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/category/polyphasi... I agree with Dustin - it works but you have to be strict on the schedule. My life didn't accommodate the schedule so I had to stop, but it did work for the short time I could schedule it.
Comment linking /blog/articles/category/polyphasic/
on “How to hack your brain - Part I: Sleep”Submitted Hacker vs Engineer - Know The Difference! as a story · 24 points
HN discussionHappy Birthday Reg! You're one of the most influential people in my career, even though we've never met. 50 huge thank yous for that! From a recent blog post of mine: "Raganwald always felt like a programmer, exploring issues that programmers cared about ... Raganwald seemed like a better version of what I could become." - http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/writers-i-love/
Comment linking /blog/articles/writers-i-love/
on “Raganwald's Nifty Fifty”Submitted Are You This Agile? Paul Graham Changes Hacker News While You Wait as a story · 22 points
HN discussionGood call. Michael Ellsberg wrote a book with that same premise. Here's a review: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/education-of-milli... (there's also a link to a related Mixergy interview there) The book doesn't say how to provide jobs for everyone, for someone who needs a nudge in the right direction it could be very helpful, likely the same sort that would create a site like "IWillMopItUp.com".
Comment linking /blog/articles/education-of-millionaires/
on “New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College”Submitted Can Y Combinator Be Beaten At Its Own Game? as a story · 21 points
HN discussion(before I get started, I can't praise HTWFAIP enough - http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/verifying-theories... ) It's not low status unless you overdo it. Everyone enjoys validation for what they do, and while some people get more praise than they want for some things they do ("Hey, Michael Jordan, great game!"), there are other parts of them that are starving. People are not monolithic, they're made of many…
Comment linking /blog/articles/verifying-theories/
on “The Gervais Principle II: Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk”Submitted Hey Language Snobs: Don’t Pinch Pennies as a story · 18 points
HN discussionWrote up my thoughts on DM: http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/meteor-discovered/ tl;dr: A+ tech book that I wish every tech writer would read and take to heart, plus Meteor looks great.
Comment linking /blog/articles/meteor-discovered/
on “Read Discover Meteor for free today”Submitted Lisp: The Golden Age Isn't Coming Back, Let's Welcome a Bright Future as a story · 16 points
HN discussionFor anyone else interested in downloading MIT lectures, I wrote a way to do it without using realplayer. http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/ripping-and-encodi...
Comment linking /blog/articles/ripping-and-encoding-streaming-rm-or-how-i-defeated-realplayer/
on “Detailed review of MIT's OCW course "Introduction to Algorithms", Part I: Analysis of Algorithms and Asymptotic Notation”Submitted Freemium Isn’t A Business Model, It’s A Marketing And Trust Strategy as a story · 14 points
HN discussionThis comes up on HN about once a year. Here's my blog where I wrote about trying it: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/category/polyphasic/ tl;dr version: - the first 5-7 days are just awful but after that you're not tired - deviating from the schedule (say, staying awake 7 hours one time instead of 4) is devastating - you do feel different and perceive time differently. Kind of like San Diego weather instead of Bost…
Comment linking /blog/category/polyphasic/
on “An Experiment: Polyphasic Sleeping”Submitted What Would A Chicago-style Y Combinator Look Like? as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI'd also be happy to talk more about this if you email me. Here's some similar advice I've given in the past: - http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/teach-yourself-program... - http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/advice-to-a-college-so...
Comment linking /blog/articles/advice-to-a-college-sophomore-programmer/
on “Sneak into tech through the back door: a hopelessly limited how-to”Submitted What Kind of Software Would People Actually Pay For? as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
