Top all-time · #4759
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.
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?
- Software Development and the False Promise of Science3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-10-14
- Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-26
- If Software Teams Were Proof Engines2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-03
- Not Mysticizing System Dynamics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-24
- Glamorize Your Problem Domain2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-24
- Pushing the Boundaries of Streamlit2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-27
What Hacker News says?
>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”Submitted Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven as a story · 462 points
HN discussionFwiw 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)”Submitted Not Mysticizing System Dynamics as a story · 124 points
HN discussionSubmitted Not a real engineer (2019) as a story · 42 points
HN discussionSubmitted Breaking Changes: A Tooling Problem as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Glamorize Your Problem Domain as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted P(user-hostile trash heap) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Against Process as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The worst thing about Jenkins is that it works as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fools Stop Mysticizing System Dynamics as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted If Software Teams Were Proof Engines as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Beware Middleware as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Software Development and the False Promise of Science as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Catholic Church vs. the Turing Test (2025) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Catholic Church vs. the Turing Test as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted MCP: REST Reborn? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Pushing the Boundaries of Streamlit as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Big Datatype: why code tools like to be written with fancy types as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Software culture as proof strategies (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Glamorize Your Problem Domain as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building software is not a job scheduling optimization problem (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Please, Systematically Enforce Your Constraints as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Monads and Mom as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Software's Centaur Era as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Pushing the Boundaries of Streamlit as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How thick should your SDK be? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Take your pragmatism for a unicycle ride as a story · 1 points
HN discussion