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Richard Marmorstein

Personal blog · twitchard.github.io/postsprogrammingaiwriting

Richard Marmorstein writes Richard's Software Blog, a personal blog at twitchard.github.io about programming, ai and writing. Since 2019, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “Software Development and the False Promise of Science”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-29, and you can follow it by feed.

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31mentions?
16HN people?
2019–2026first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 8 in 2022

Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?

Why HN links it

Linked by HN readers for an essay on 'hard to vary' explanations and whether argument-driven or data-driven reasoning is better. Comments mostly engage with the ideas rather than judge the writing.

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.

Richard Marmorstein's software blog: essays on developer tools, programming languages, AI coding agents, and software culture.

Most-linked posts?

  1. Software Development and the False Promise of Science
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-10-14
  2. Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-26
  3. If Software Teams Were Proof Engines
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-03
  4. Not Mysticizing System Dynamics
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-24
  5. Glamorize Your Problem Domain
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-24
  6. Pushing the Boundaries of Streamlit
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-27

What Hacker News says?

  1. >A simple answer to this is that good explanations are hard to vary. But the "hard to vary" explanations were built up from observing data of smashing particles. E.g. from your link: - Frank Wilczek describes hard-to-vary-ness as follows "A theory begins to be perfect if any change makes it worse." He explains further using the Standard Model as an example of a hard-to-vary explanation: Too many gluons! But each of…

    Comment linking /posts/2019-10-13-software-development-and-the-false-promise-of-science.html

    on “Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven”
  2. Submitted Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven as a story · 462 points

    HN discussion
  3. Fwiw the teaching of the church is that (today's) AI isn't at a human level because human intelligence is something that we experience whereas artificial intelligence seems to be merely a sophistication in performing tasks. This week's encyclical didn't go into this. Last year's "Doctrinal Note" (less authoritative) did though: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... and I did a write-up on i…

    Comment linking /posts/2025-06-28-the-catholic-church-vs-the-turing-test.html

    on “Magnifica Humanitas (Encyclical Letter)”
  4. Submitted Not Mysticizing System Dynamics as a story · 124 points

    HN discussion
  5. Submitted Not a real engineer (2019) as a story · 42 points

    HN discussion
  6. Submitted Breaking Changes: A Tooling Problem as a story · 13 points

    HN discussion
  7. Submitted Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven as a story · 12 points

    HN discussion
  8. Submitted Glamorize Your Problem Domain as a story · 5 points

    HN discussion
  9. Submitted P(user-hostile trash heap) as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  10. Submitted Against Process as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  11. Submitted The worst thing about Jenkins is that it works as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  12. Submitted Fools Stop Mysticizing System Dynamics as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  13. Submitted Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  14. Submitted If Software Teams Were Proof Engines as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  15. Submitted Beware Middleware as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  16. Submitted Software Development and the False Promise of Science as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  17. Submitted The Catholic Church vs. the Turing Test (2025) as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  18. Submitted The Catholic Church vs. the Turing Test as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  19. Submitted MCP: REST Reborn? as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  20. Submitted Pushing the Boundaries of Streamlit as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  21. Submitted Big Datatype: why code tools like to be written with fancy types as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  22. Submitted Software culture as proof strategies (2020) as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  23. Submitted Glamorize Your Problem Domain as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  24. Submitted Building software is not a job scheduling optimization problem (2020) as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  25. Submitted Please, Systematically Enforce Your Constraints as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  26. Submitted Monads and Mom as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  27. Submitted Software's Centaur Era as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  28. Submitted Pushing the Boundaries of Streamlit as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  29. Submitted How thick should your SDK be? as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  30. Submitted Take your pragmatism for a unicycle ride as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion

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