Top all-time · #799
Richard Schneeman
Personal blog · schneems.com · on HN as schneemsprogrammingweb
Richard Schneeman writes Schneems, a personal blog at schneems.com about programming and web. Since 2011, 81 different Hacker News readers have linked it 153 times, most often “The room where it happens: How Rails gets made”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Richard Schneeman's posts for Ruby and Rails debugging tips, a Ruby GIF tutorial, Sprockets history, and his OMSCS review, plus a widely cited sharp-tools analogy about C.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- One commenter calls the OMSCS post a great article worth the read; another calls the sharp-tools post an excellent blog post; another calls a GIF tutorial reall
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Hi, I'm Richard Schneeman. I write about Programming and Open Source. I run CodeTriage, the best way to get involved with OSS. I'm @schneems everywhere online.
Most-linked posts?
- The room where it happens: How Rails gets made4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-05-12
- I know how to code, I can code in anything4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-10-17
- OMG OMSCS: Is an Online Masters Right for You?3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-07-26
- Sharp Tools3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-12-02
- The Oldest Bug in Ruby – Why Rack::Timeout Might Hose Your Server3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-02-23
- Don't McBlock Me3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-06-03
- Saving Sprockets3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-31
- My Red Hot ADHD Programming 'Affliction'3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-22
- Puma 4: New I/O 4 Your Server3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-06-26
- Rubyist makes some Python code 5x Faster3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-10-02
What Hacker News says?
It exists, though does rely on the central service: http://schneems.com/post/61514247453/explain-shell-from-your...
Comment linking /post/61514247453/explain-shell-from-your-shell
on “Explain Shell”Submitted How I Reduced My DB Server Load by 80% as a story · 201 points
HN discussion“No politics at work” except for Dave who spends company time posting political blog entries on his company built platform. FWIW I captured a timeline of events in this post but a lot of the Twitter links are dead now. https://schneems.com/2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-ho...
Comment linking /2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-how-rails-gets-made/
on “Ruby Central's Attack on RubyGems [pdf]”Submitted What is a Source Map as a story · 139 points
HN discussionNot related to “git push” deployments, but absolutely related to the PaaS experience, the team I’m working on is previewing Cloud Native Buildpacks (CNB) which is an open spec in the CNCF for Buildpacks that target OCI. What this means is that you can now generate a docker image locally using similar build tooling to Heroku’s “git push” logic that detects language support and does the right thing TM. Here’s a tutori…
Comment linking /2024/05/01/build-a-ruby-on-rails-application-image-in-5-minutes-no-dockerfile-required/
on “Piku: Allows git push deployments to your own servers”Submitted Open Source in your Inbox: Code Triage as a story · 74 points
HN discussionSee also: https://www.schneems.com/2016/08/16/sharp-tools.html
Comment linking /2016/08/16/sharp-tools.html
on “Fearless Concurrency in Firefox Quantum”Submitted RubyConf 2024: Cloud Native Buildpack Hackday (and other Ruby deploy tools, too) as a story · 71 points
HN discussionI wrote about my experiences a few weeks ago: https://schneems.com/2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-maste... I'm through my second OMSCS semester, and it you want to know if I think it's worth it...you'll have to read the post ;)
Comment linking /2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-masters-right-for-you/
on “Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?”Submitted Lies, Damned Lies, and Averages: Perc50, Perc95 Explained for Programmers as a story · 70 points
HN discussionI've been entertaining the idea of going through this course as well. I graduated 2 years ago, BS in CS, and part of me misses being in school. Plus my employer has a decent tuition reimbursement program. Would anyone who works full time and gone through this program care to share their thoughts? Edit: Just found this great article from another comment https://schneems.com/2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-maste...
Comment linking /2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-masters-right-for-you/
on “Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?”Submitted NoSQL with Postgres - Using Hstore in Rails as a story · 40 points
HN discussionRichard Schneeman (an engineer at Heroku) wrote a great blog post on this very topic; worth the read: https://schneems.com/2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-maste...
Comment linking /2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-masters-right-for-you/
on “Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?”Submitted Rubyist makes some Python code 5x Faster as a story · 21 points
HN discussionI agree. You can read the talk here https://www.schneems.com/2020/09/16/the-lifechanging-magic-o... . I introduced the voiceover artist at the beginning, she’s a Japanese speaker that I found on fiver. I chose her because the talk was being given at a Japanese speaking conference (Ruby Kaigi). I love the foil of having a second character on screen but having an accented cartoon was not the right effect I was going f…
Comment linking /2020/09/16/the-lifechanging-magic-of-tidying-ruby-object-allocations/
on “The t-test was invented at the Guinness brewery”Submitted The room where it happens: How Rails gets made as a story · 16 points
HN discussionSlightly off-topic digression: Would WAS compilation help solve the ruby / rails timeout problem? https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/h12-request-timeout-in... > H12 - Request Timeout in Ruby (MRI) > Rack-timeout limitations > Due to the design of the Ruby programming language’s Thread#raise API, which timing out code depends on, there is a known bug with rack-timeout that can put your app into a bad state if rack…
Comment linking /2017/02/21/the-oldest-bug-in-ruby-why-racktimeout-might-hose-your-server/
on “Ruby 3.2 preview 1 with support for WASM compilation”Submitted My Red Hot ADHD Programming 'Affliction' as a story · 13 points
HN discussionAt least a third of the company quit. That is not something that happens over something “deeply disingenuous”. I’ve got a timeline put together on it https://schneems.com/2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-ho... the post also goes into detail about Rails governance internals from my experiences as a contributor over the last decade.
Comment linking /2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-how-rails-gets-made/
on “1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company”Submitted Learn Ruby on Rails online from the University of Texas & Gowalla as a story · 13 points
HN discussion@Schneems has a really good tutorial on this using ffmpeg. http://www.schneems.com/post/41104255619/use-gifs-in-your-pu...
Comment linking /post/41104255619/use-gifs-in-your-pull-request-for-good-not-evil/
on “Making GIFs From Video Files With Python”Submitted I know how to code, I can code in anything as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSpeaking of not wanting to get locked in. I work for Heroku and we are previewing an open source buildpack that produces docker images here’s a tutorial https://www.schneems.com/2024/05/01/build-a-ruby-on-rails-ap...
Comment linking /2024/05/01/build-a-ruby-on-rails-application-image-in-5-minutes-no-dockerfile-required/
on “Show HN: Porter Cloud – PaaS with an eject button”Submitted Recruiter Sniping as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI wrote about my experiences in OMSCS here https://schneems.com/2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-maste... . It took about 7 years, but I finally got my degree.
Comment linking /2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-masters-right-for-you/
on “OMSCS Open Courseware”Submitted Is WEBrick Webscale? as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> I really don't see what the fuss is about about 'replacing' it really. It's a sharp tool, requiring care and attention. I really like the take on the "sharp tools" analogy here: https://www.schneems.com/2016/08/16/sharp-tools.html . Your tool might be sharp, but that doesn't mean that you can't make it safer to use.
Comment linking /2016/08/16/sharp-tools.html
on “The Resurgence of C Programming”Submitted How I Reduced My DB Server Load by 80% as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThanks for the fast reply! For some background: Rundoc is a tool for writing tutorials such that the author is guaranteed the outcome is valid (if a command fails, the tutorial fails) and for helping users see the exact output they would expect (instead of a static output). The tool has website integration that allows you to take screenshots and navigate a webpage. Recently I wrote this tutorial https://schneems.com…
Comment linking /2023/06/14/its-dangerous-to-go-alone-pub-mod-use-thisrs/
on “CodeMic: A new way to talk about code”Submitted Would you like a Mobile App with That? as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
