Top all-time · #41
Steve Yegge
Personal blog · steve-yegge.blogspot.comprogrammingcareerwriting
Steve Yegge writes Stevey's Blog Rants, a personal blog at steve-yegge.blogspot.com about programming, career and writing. Since 2007, 622 different Hacker News readers have linked it 858 times, most often “Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006)”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Steve Yegge's blog for its programming and career essays, notably the "Kingdom of Nouns" Java rant and the touch-typing and interview posts. Commenters cite it as a standard reference for these topics.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Commenters call his posts "must-read" and "great", and say one post changed how they work with tools and typing; one says he is a brilliant writer with good hum
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns (2006)82 people · 96 mentions · first linked 2008-02-29
- Get that job at Google49 people · 55 mentions · first linked 2008-03-13
- Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns41 people · 51 mentions · first linked 2017-04-27
- Steve Yegge: Have you ever legalized marijuana?34 people · 42 mentions · first linked 2009-04-09
- Rich Programmer Food27 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2007-06-22
- Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret26 people · 28 mentions · first linked 2008-09-11
- Done, and Gets Things Smart24 people · 28 mentions · first linked 2008-06-17
- Agile: 5 years later and you're still doing it wrong18 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2007-05-04
- Steve Yegge: Lisp is not an acceptable Lisp. (2006)18 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2007-07-21
- The Universal Design Pattern17 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2008-10-20
What Hacker News says?
Probably one of these blog posts: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/09/ten-tips-for-slightl...
Comment linking /2007/09/ten-tips-for-slightly-less-awful-resume.html
on “My students cheated... a lot”Submitted Kotlin Is Better as a story · 538 points
HN discussionMaybe/Nothing is a perfect example of the null object pattern. Either provide a sane default or a typed instance with empty values rather than checking for null/undefined. Ie the 'null object' in 'null object pattern' doesn't mean using null to indicate the absence of a value. Null isn't used in JS to mark undefined variables, that's what 'undefined' is for. Unlike static/OOP languages, null is specifically reserved…
Comment linking /2010/12/haskell-researchers-announce-discovery.html?m=1
on “NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?”Submitted Wikileaks To Leak 5000 Open Source Java Projects as a story · 487 points
HN discussionTwo relevant points here: 1. My comment assumes the code itself is well-written and clear. If it is, the plain English explanation will be superfluous, and you'll be able to understand the code just as fast. If it's not, then the comment was the wrong solution to a real problem. The correct solution is to rewrite the code. 2. What counts as "well-written code you can understand instantly" is of course experience-dep…
Comment linking /2008/02/portrait-of-n00b.html
on “Please do not attempt to simplify this code”Submitted Haskell Researchers Announce Discovery of Industry Programmer Who Gives a Shit as a story · 429 points
HN discussionI find it interesting that you referenced http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali... at a time in the United States when two states have in fact legalized Marijuana. I think this simply highlights the point that change for the better is possible if the people want it enough. What does this mean for Gitmo? Could we apply the same sort of sidestep? I.E. a small forward-thinking community with a no…
Comment linking /2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html
on “Gitmo Is Killing Me”Submitted Hacker News Fires Steve Yegge as a story · 340 points
HN discussionWar on nouns? Like in Steve Yegge’s Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns ? https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo...
Comment linking /2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html
on “Norway votes to decriminalise drugs and offer treatment instead of jail time”Submitted EBay Patents 10-Click Checkout as a story · 337 points
HN discussionIt's a little hard to talk about this broad topic without bloviating. Here goes. So first, take that stuff Steve said about extensibility to heart. He has another blog somewhere, oh here it is http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.ht... about software that is alive because it's extensible. That is true of your startup too. You don't want to be a "site", you want to be a "service". And that means…
Comment linking /2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html
on “Steve's Google Platform rant”Submitted Blogger Finger as a story · 235 points
HN discussionI think the best description of this kind of "obfuscation" that especially afflicted Java still is Steve Yegge's "Kingdom of Nouns" rant: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo...
Comment linking /2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html
on “Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition”Submitted Rich Programmer Food as a story · 217 points
HN discussionFrom my pov, both inheritance and encapsulation aren't great if you have to maintain code and add new one. Also, I dislike design patterns overuse, DDD done Uncle Bob style. Also we can think of where OOP drives many teams to: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo... https://factoryfactoryfactory.net/ https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...
Comment linking /2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html
on “Minecraft removing obfuscation in Java Edition”Submitted Agile: 5 years later and you're still doing it wrong as a story · 215 points
HN discussionI do think that hard work and preparation can land you a job at these companies. I went from doing a manual labor job and never making over $33k/yr, to busting my hump 4 years in University to land these jobs. I also recognize that interviewing is its own skill that needs to be worked at, and simply doing LeetCode questions or reading Intro to Algorithms by CLRS isn't everything. I can honestly say that I have never…
Comment linking /2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html
on “Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters”Submitted A programmer's view of the Universe, part 1: The fish as a story · 177 points
HN discussionOr as Steve Yegge likes to say, "Done and Gets Things Smart" http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...
Comment linking /2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html
on “Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code”Submitted Math For Programmers as a story · 167 points
HN discussionOr as Steve Yegge likes to say, "Done and Gets Thinks Smart" http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...
Comment linking /2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html
on “Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code”Submitted Done, and Gets Things Smart as a story · 137 points
HN discussionSpeaking of touch typing, there's a must-read [1] which made me learn and practice this skill. [1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirties...
Comment linking /2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html
on “The Case for Slow Programming”Submitted The Universal Design Pattern as a story · 127 points
HN discussionUnix isn't for end users, it's for developers to build on top of to give things to end users. Linux on desktop already happened years and years ago if you work for a tech company, and that's probably about as far as it needs to go. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptab... This is Steve Yegge's understanding of the Lisp community, and I should clarify that I don't think the XML monstrosities we…
Comment linking /2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html
on “The average size of Web pages is now the average size of a Doom install”Submitted Code's Worst Enemy as a story · 125 points
HN discussionThis is such a great thread, I'm excited to begin reading quite a few of the linked blogs (such as this one: https://acoup.blog/ ). These ones are some of my favorites: - www.wall.org/~aron/blog/ (physics, theology, history, philosophy) - http://xahlee.info/ (math, emacs, keyboards, etc.) - https://matt.might.net/articles/ (academy, compsci, etc.) - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ (programming, companies, etc.) - ht…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Portrait of a N00b as a story · 124 points
HN discussionhttps://steve-yegge.medium.com/ His old blog is also amusing: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted The Next Big Language as a story · 124 points
HN discussion
