Top all-time · #6162
Robby Russell
Personal blog · robbyonrails.com/articlesprogrammingcareer
Robby Russell writes Robby on Rails, a personal blog at robbyonrails.com about programming and career. Since 2007, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “I Didn't Want AI to Be Good at This”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Robby Russell's blog for Rails development writing, and one commenter also points to a post on DHH's email-as-views idea. The comments mention the blog and the email post only briefly.
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.
Robby Russell writes about Ruby on Rails, software maintainability, and the craft of building long-lived applications. Creator of Oh My Zsh.
Most-linked posts?
- I Didn't Want AI to Be Good at This2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-12
- When Your Cache Has a Bigger Carbon Footprint Than Your Users2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-29
- Seven stages teams go through with their software tech stack2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-20
- Oh My Zsh: Four years ago today2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-10-07
- Robby on Rails : Sending email: Controllers versus Models2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-11-16
- The Internal Tooling Maturity Ladder2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-14
What Hacker News says?
Beat me to the punch... Oh-my-zsh ftw. Robby Russell has a great blog about rails development too. http://www.robbyonrails.com/
Comment linking /
on “Git info in your ZSH Prompt”Submitted Response to "Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language" as a story · 153 points
HN discussionThe post is a direct response to: http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2009/11/16/sending-emai... Discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=944686
Comment linking /articles/2009/11/16/sending-email-controllers-versus-models
on “DHH: Think of emails as views delivered through SMTP”Submitted Robby on Rails : Sending email: Controllers versus Models as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Didn't Want AI to Be Good at This as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Didn't Want AI to Be Good at This as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Architecture for Contraction as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Talking Shop with Ruby and Rails Maintainers at Rails World 2025 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted When Your Cache Has a Bigger Carbon Footprint Than Your Users as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted When Your Cache Has a Bigger Carbon Footprint Than Your Users as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stop Pretending You're the Last Developer as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rails Hosting Survey as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The keynote I thought I was going to give at Rails World as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Your codebase doesn't care how it got written as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Organizations, Like Code, Deserve Refactoring as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Seven stages teams go through with their software tech stack as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Estimating vs Timeboxing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Claude Code for the Semi-Reluctant, Somewhat Curious Rails Developer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a RAG Tool in Ruby 4 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Most Developers Don't Build New Things as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Humans in the Loop as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stages of Software Tech Stack Adoption (You're Probably in Stage 5) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Internal Tooling Maturity Ladder as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Internal Tooling Maturity Ladder as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted 8 Things Github’s Atom Editor is not going to solve for you as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Oh My Zsh: Four years ago today as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted ..and on the seventh day, Science created zsh as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Masochism: Write to 1 Master DB / Read from Mult Slave DBs with Ruby on Rails as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
