Top all-time · #2786
Software the Hard way
Personal blog · software.rajivprab.comprogrammingcareer
Software the Hard way is a personal blog at software.rajivprab.com about programming and career. Since 2018, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 117 times, most often “Experiences Working with an Outsourced Dev Shop”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on software testing and race conditions, a career and immigration story, a path to financial independence, and the correct use of Java's volatile keyword.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Thoughts on Software Development
Most-linked posts?
- Experiences Working with an Outsourced Dev Shop6 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2021-04-26
- Myths Programmers Believe about CPU Caches (2018)6 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2018-04-29
- Rethinking software testing: perspectives from the world of hardware (2019)5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-04-29
- Hiring Is Broken?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-07-27
- When feature flags do and don’t make sense (2019)4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-12-19
- Preventing Software Rot4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-04-25
- Alert Fast2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-08-04
- An Alternative to Dependency Injection Frameworks2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-11-06
- Product-Engineering Collaboration – Getting Past Waterfall2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-07-24
- Don’t Be an Evolutionary Programmer2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-11-13
What Hacker News says?
This sounds like a classic case of "simplicity is in the eye of the beholder" . If you're someone who has experience with, or can easily grok concepts such as "pointer to a pointer", then the second snippet seems obviously simpler. After all, there are fewer branches to consider. Unfortunately, as someone who stopped working with pointers a long time ago, my mind has to work in overdrive to understand any implementa…
Comment linking /2019/08/29/abstractions-are-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/
on “Linus Torvalds' good taste argument for linked lists, explained”Submitted If founders treated their investors the same way they treated their employees as a story · 679 points
HN discussionI'm not surprised that there are vast numbers of latent low-probability race conditions in the linux kernel or any major software project. Having seen the testing process in both hardware and software projects, the two are not even comparable. The testing process in most software projects is dominated by fully deterministic unit tests that are very simple in nature, and make large numbers of assumptions about the be…
Comment linking /2019/04/28/rethinking-software-testing-perspectives-from-the-world-of-hardware/
on “Google Is Uncovering Hundreds of Race Conditions Within the Linux Kernel”Submitted My Path to Financial Independence as a Software Engineer as a story · 368 points
HN discussionI'm not intimately familiar with "fuzzing" techniques, and by "randomized inputs", I am indeed referring to tests that could be flaky in the presence of bugs. Organizational discipline is indeed needed here, in order to not ignore the occasional flaky failure, and to investigate the cause of the flaky error. I believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Here's a link that talks about the above in more detail - http…
Comment linking /2019/04/28/rethinking-software-testing-perspectives-from-the-world-of-hardware/
on “Controversial Programming Opinions (2012)”Submitted Myths Programmers Believe about CPU Caches (2018) as a story · 366 points
HN discussionRelated: https://software.rajivprab.com/2022/05/10/18-years-a-transie...
Comment linking /2022/05/10/18-years-a-transient/
on “USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program”Submitted If founders treated investors the way they treat employees as a story · 347 points
HN discussionI built a side-project 3 years ago: http://www.thecaucus.net I spent quite a bit of time getting it off the ground, but over the last 2 years, I've spent maybe ~10 hours in total keeping it running. The only times when I've had to invest time into it, is when a certain piece of my tech stack gets deprecated or discontinued. For example, I had originally done login-auth through a SaaS provider, which then got acquire…
Comment linking /2018/04/29/caucus-tech-stack/
on “Ask HN: How do you build applications that require zero maintenance?”Submitted My journey through the American immigration system as a computer engineer as a story · 248 points
HN discussionHere's one example: https://software.rajivprab.com/2021/12/26/my-path-to-financi... And the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29691039
Comment linking /2021/12/26/my-path-to-financial-independence-as-a-software-engineer/
on “Ask HN: How much do you earn? (feel free to use throwaway account)”Submitted Hiring Is Broken? as a story · 189 points
HN discussionThere was just an interesting article mentioning the correct use of volatile on r/programming https://software.rajivprab.com/2018/04/29/myths-programmers-...
Comment linking /2018/04/29/myths-programmers-believe-about-cpu-caches/
on “Java – What is the volatile keyword useful for”Submitted Myths Programmers Believe about CPU Caches (2018) as a story · 156 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mutation Driven Testing: When TDD Just Isn’t Good Enough as a story · 125 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Birth of Legacy Software – How Change Aversion Feeds on Itself as a story · 113 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rethinking software testing: perspectives from the world of hardware (2019) as a story · 101 points
HN discussionSubmitted When feature flags do and don’t make sense (2019) as a story · 98 points
HN discussionSubmitted CPU cache misconceptions, and the MESI cache coherence protocol as a story · 87 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Law of Net Design Costs as a story · 60 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Is There So Much Crap Software in the World as a story · 45 points
HN discussionSubmitted Myths Programmers Believe about CPU Caches (2018) as a story · 16 points
HN discussionSubmitted Nuances of Overloading and Overriding in Java as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted Myths programmers believe about CPU caches (2018) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tech debt can't be solved as a roadmap item as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rethinking Software Testing: Perspectives from the World of Hardware as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cracking the Senior Software Interview as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cracking the Senior Software Interview as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Preventing Software Rot as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Myths Programmers Believe about CPU Caches as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
