Top all-time · #10019
Richard Eng
Personal blog · richardeng.medium.comprogrammingstartups
Richard Eng writes Stories by Richard Kenneth Eng on Medium, a personal blog at richardeng.medium.com about programming and startups. Since 2022, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-10-11, 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 Richard Eng's posts on Smalltalk and programming language design, including his "syntax on a postcard" piece, his Pharo debugger guide, and his article on Apple's Smalltalk-style syntax.
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?
- /syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fabf883 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-11-18
What Hacker News says?
Smalltalk grammar fits into a postcard. https://richardeng.medium.com/syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fa...
Comment linking /syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fabf88
on “Ruby vs. Python comes down to the for loop (2021)”Submitted Smalltalk: An Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon (2020) as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThe fact that it's not wide spread is the empirical evidence. > Clearly, there is an obstacle to the acceptance of FP. I think I know what it is. The functional paradigm is an unnatural way for human beings to think. People normally view the world as comprising objects. Nobody views the world as comprising functions, unless he is trained to do so. https://richardeng.medium.com/fp-is-for-nerds-6ed1ca43bb34 > When it…
Comment linking /fp-is-for-nerds-6ed1ca43bb34
on “Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica”Submitted The Rejuvenation of Squeak as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> There isn't one. https://github.com/pharo-open-documentation/pharo-wiki/blob/... https://despotadesdibujau.github.io/southsmalltalks/how-to-d... https://book.huihoo.com/smalltalk/pharo/enterprise-pharo/boo... Also, not generally available unfortunately: https://richardeng.medium.com/mobile-smalltalk-c6f0cc712909 Both cinecom and vast should allow deployment/distribution: https://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/ https://ww…
Comment linking /mobile-smalltalk-c6f0cc712909
on “Cuis-Smalltalk”Submitted Pandemic Postmortem as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn terms of surface area, I think is hard to beat languages in the Smalltalk family. Smalltalk has only six reserved words: true , false , nil , self , super and thisContext. To emphasize the simplicity, there is even a smalltalk postcard to show the whole syntax fits on it. See https://richardeng.medium.com/syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fa... I think this postcard remark may be a bit misleading sometimes, as in pract…
Comment linking /syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fabf88
on “Programming languages with small surface area”> Smalltalk's syntax never go really popular though. One could say that was its biggest drawback. A lot of Smalltalk-style syntax was absolutely massive for a decade or so you could argue, at least under the guise of the gazillions of iPhone apps that were written in Objective-C. This random blog post probably does a better job than me: > https://richardeng.medium.com/apple-has-been-using-smalltalk...
Comment linking /apple-has-been-using-smalltalk-for-years-f9df22dd29fe
on “Ruby vs. Java vs. TypeScript: my experience on building a Cowork DOCX plugin”I prefer the postcard ;-) https://richardeng.medium.com/syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fa...
Comment linking /syntax-on-a-post-card-cb6d85fabf88
on “Rubysyn: Clarifying Ruby's Syntax and Semantics”Pharo does it. See https://richardeng.medium.com/how-to-use-the-pharo-debugger-...
Comment linking /how-to-use-the-pharo-debugger-eb554a2950b6
on “Ask HN: Languages/environments with Common Lisp-like breakloops/interactivity?”