Top all-time · #8075
Philip Dorrell
Personal blog · thinkinghard.com/blogprogrammingscience
Philip Dorrell's personal blog at thinkinghard.com covers programming and science. Since 2013, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 44 times, most often “Puzzle or Meaning Oriented Programming: “i got it to work” vs. “you can read it””. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN comments link Philip Dorrell's posts on what counts as amateur theoretical science and on possible prior art for a Twitter patent. One comment also quotes his bio.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Puzzle or Meaning Oriented Programming: “i got it to work” vs. “you can read it”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-09
- Disorganized Incremental Software Development: cryptographic hash naming (2005)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-05-10
What Hacker News says?
http://thinkinghard.com/blog/IdentityTheft.html (2005)
Comment linking /blog/IdentityTheft.html
on “Stop Calling it ‘Identity Theft’”Submitted How to Write and Document Code So That Other Developers Can Understand It as a story · 5 points
HN discussionOn the subject of using nameless hashes in software development, to "solve" the naming problem, I wrote this article a while ago: http://thinkinghard.com/blog/DisorganizedIncrementalSoftware... .
Comment linking /blog/DisorganizedIncrementalSoftwareDevelopment.html
on “Unison: a next-generation programming platform”Submitted How to Do Virtual Hosting on Google App Engine as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMy own attempt to deal with this issue (2013): http://thinkinghard.com/blog/UniqueFactorisation.html
Comment linking /blog/UniqueFactorisation.html
on “Why isn’t the fundamental theorem of arithmetic obvious? (2011)”Submitted 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Doesn't Prohibit a Decrease of Entropy as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMy own experiment in brevity: the Pitch Blurb. (Ironically long) explanation at http://thinkinghard.com/blog/PitchBlurb.html . Lots of examples in one web page at http://thinkinghard.com/blog/index.html .
Comment linking /blog/index.html
on “Write less”Submitted When Non-Scientists Contribute: To “Science”, or to “Paywall Science”? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHow basic, and what qualifies as research? http://thinkinghard.com/blog/AmateurTheoreticalScience.html > In recent times, science has become very professionalised. Many of the steps in the list above serve specifically to maintain high professional standards. For example, step 5 – complete a Ph.D. – is a way of measuring an individual's likelihood of making significant contributions to scientific knowledge.
Comment linking /blog/AmateurTheoreticalScience.html
on “Why I'm Getting a PhD”Submitted Puzzle or Meaning Oriented Programming: “i got it to work” vs. “you can read it” as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAlso: http://thinkinghard.com/domkol/main.html This interactive visualization lets you see that the number of times the polynomial function "winds" around the circumference of the circle is equal to the number of zeroes inside the same circle. (Caveat: the interaction to move the zeroes around requires a mouse.)
Comment linking /domkol/main.html
on “The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra: A Visual Approach [pdf]”Submitted Translation visualization of rhoScript 8 queens example as a story · 2 points
HN discussionRelevant prior art, publicly disclosed on or before February 2001, which quite explicitly includes the "follower/following" mechanic: (The blog article was written in relation to a different patent, but the prior art is most directly related to a Twitter-like service.) http://thinkinghard.com/blog/PossiblePriorArtForKootolPatent... http://web.archive.org/web/20010223204516/miski.sourceforge....
Comment linking /blog/PossiblePriorArtForKootolPatentDated2001.html
on “Twitter granted patent on Twitter-like services”Submitted Notes On Programming Complex Visualization in Javascript, Canvas and SVG as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI made a translation visualisation example (using the given 8 queens example) at http://thinkinghard.com/correspondence/rhoscript/index.html .
Comment linking /correspondence/rhoscript/index.html
on “Show HN: I designed a language for code golf, compiling to Common Lisp”Submitted Show HN: Complex function visualization with Canvas and SVG as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI believe I might have been the first person to correctly analyse the thermodynamics of evolution by natural selection: http://thinkinghard.com/evolution/2ndlaw.html (originally http://web.archive.org/web/19961221074218/http://www.xmissio... ).
Comment linking /evolution/2ndlaw.html
on “Information Theory and the Foundation of Life”Submitted Why We Should Have a Legally Defined Public Disclosure System as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMy own attempt to understand the complex relationship between will-power and "happiness" is laid out in this article which I wrote a while ago (2007): http://thinkinghard.com/consciousness/advice.html .
Comment linking /consciousness/advice.html
on “To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind in Life”Submitted “I got it to work” vs. “You can read it” as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis might be a bit out of date (2013), but it's what worked for me at the time using a not particularly high-powered computer running Ubuntu: http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencasts... (recommended software SimpleScreenRecorder).
Comment linking /blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencastsInLinux.html
on “Screencasting with free software”Submitted The Security of Your Password Is Very, Very Important to Us (2013) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionLink to something I wrote once, which includes a discussion about absolute vs relative morality: http://thinkinghard.com/blog/BiologyOfMorality.html . (It would appear that "moral realism" is just another way of saying "absolute morality", or "moral absolutism".)
Comment linking /blog/BiologyOfMorality.html
on “Against Effective Altruism”Submitted Disorganized Incremental Software Development: cryptographic hash naming (2005) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOn a similar theme: "Voted Compensation" - http://thinkinghard.com/ip/PublicGood.html Basically, a government/taxation-funded prize scheme, where everyone gets to vote on who should get prizes. Like nationalized crowd-funding, but strictly after-the-fact (unlike Kickstarter, which is very much before-the-fact).
Comment linking /ip/PublicGood.html
on “A New Ideas Machine”Submitted The Personal Software Quality Questionnaire as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI described a similar theory of neuronal agency in 2005: http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowDoesANeuronKnowWhatToDo.html .
Comment linking /blog/HowDoesANeuronKnowWhatToDo.html
on “Neurons Gone Wild”Submitted How to Make High Quality Screencasts in Linux (and Put Them on the Internet) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionDoctor Falkvinge has diagnosed "Mass Psychosis". I would like to present a different "diagnosis" - the copyright wars are not a psychosis, they are the result of tension between two distinct moral justifications. The first moral justification is that copyright serves the public interest. Under this justification, the ideal form of copyright law may change as circumstances change. For example, the public might conclu…
Comment linking /blog/ThereAreTwoDistinctJustificationsOfCopyright.html
on “Copyright Monopoly Enforcement Today Is A Mass Psychosis”Submitted Show HN: Interactive tags for a (long) table of contents as a story · 1 points
HN discussion