Top all-time · #480
swyx's site
Personal blog · swyx.io · on HN as swyxprogrammingai
swyx's site is a personal blog at swyx.io about programming and ai. Since 2017, 120 different Hacker News readers have linked it 396 times, most often “Measuring Developer Relations”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-05, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link swyx.io for long-form JavaScript and React writing, covering build tools, the JS "third age", React internals and hooks, and essays on learning in public and creating luck. One commenter also calls it a good source for articles on JS and general dev topics.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- One commenter calls the create-luck essay a favourite; others recommend the React hooks and JS build tools pieces.
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.
Writer, Founder, and Devtools Startup Advisor based in San Francisco.
Most-linked posts?
- Measuring Developer Relations7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-02-27
- Learn in Public7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-03-19
- Preemptive Pluralization Is (Probably) Not Evil6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-03-13
- How to Create Luck (2020)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-06-14
- Learn in Public (2018)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-11-14
- How to Create Luck5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-06-14
- Signs that a Startup is Going Bad (2023)4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-01-11
- The Meta-Creator Ceiling4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-20
- The Meta Creator Ceiling4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-02-17
- The Light and Dark Side of the API Economy4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-11-18
What Hacker News says?
Hello Necovek, I would like to connect with you on linkedin because I also understand and see this problem This link shows a touchline between using api and not using api https://www.swyx.io/api-economy/ But how can we build some tool for telling product managers that they should fix there automating proces?
Comment linking /api-economy/
on “Ask HN: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?”Submitted AWS is playing chess, Cloudflare is playing Go as a story · 797 points
HN discussion> I can see both sides. If you're a startup that needs to be able to scale quickly if product market fit is achieved, the cloud really saves your bacon. Depends on the team size of the said startup [0]. In my opinion, tech-shops are better off using new-age cloud providers like fly.io / glitch.com / render.com / railway.app / replit.com / deno.com / workers.dev etc [1]. [0] https://tailscale.com/blog/modules-monolit…
Comment linking /cloud-distros/
on “I got pwned by my cloud costs”Submitted The world is run by people no smarter than you as a story · 219 points
HN discussionin the genre of naming things, some related things to explore: - avoiding naming things if you can help it - using tooling to autogenerate names - avoiding too short, likely overloaded names like `id`, `name`, and `url` - don't choose lazy pluralization - eg instead of `names/name`, use `nameList/nameItem` - encoding types to make Wrong Code Look Wrong, a famous Spolsky opinion (lite hungarian notation) - coming up…
Comment linking /how-to-name-things
on “Please put units in names”Submitted Things Markdown got wrong as a story · 193 points
HN discussionfor those who want related thinking i defined my list of table stakes features for blogs here https://www.swyx.io/the-surprisingly-high-table-stakes-of-mo... across reader experience, author experience, and developer experience (for self maintained blogging software)
Comment linking /the-surprisingly-high-table-stakes-of-modern-blogs
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted The Coronavirus Recession and What It Means for Developers as a story · 105 points
HN discussionyes but one of my central arguments [1] is that it is time to explicitly charge customers for IE11 support rather than implicitly have your 99% of customers subsidise support for the 1% 1: https://www.swyx.io/ie11-eol/
Comment linking /ie11-eol/
on “TailwindCSS v2.0”Submitted Mise en Place Writing as a story · 85 points
HN discussionagreed on the counterintuitiveness. I echo a lot of your points on my Why Tailwind essay: https://www.swyx.io/why-tailwind/
Comment linking /why-tailwind/
on “TailwindCSS v2.0”Submitted The Part Time Creator Manifesto as a story · 79 points
HN discussionI'm at https://www.swyx.io/writing/ I write about Frontend dev (React/Svelte/Tailwind/etc) and Node/Serverless, but my best pieces are junior/intermediate dev career advice stuff and that has frontpaged HN a few times - https://www.swyx.io/writing/learn-in-public - https://www.swyx.io/writing/svelte-static - https://www.swyx.io/writing/coronavirus-recession/ - https://www.swyx.io/writing/writing-mise-en-place/ - htt…
Comment linking /writing/markdown-mistakes/
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted The Third Age of JavaScript as a story · 77 points
HN discussioni wrote a quick howto a while ago for anyone looking to try this out https://www.swyx.io/running-docker-without-docker-desktop
Comment linking /running-docker-without-docker-desktop
on “Podman Desktop: A Free OSS Alternative to Docker Desktop”Submitted 80/20 is the new Half-Ass as a story · 67 points
HN discussioni wrote a bit more about this recently which seemed to resonate with others: https://www.swyx.io/part-time-creator-manifesto/ basically, you want to create something you control on your own. the minimum viable version of which is a blog or newsletter, but it could easily extend to youtube or teaching on egghead.io or lynda, up to and including a full fledged side business.
Comment linking /part-time-creator-manifesto/
on “Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)”Submitted Learn in Public (2018) as a story · 66 points
HN discussionSurprised I haven't seen https://www.swyx.io/ mentioned for articles in the JS world and general dev stuff https://kentcdodds.com/ Is also great for JS, React especially testing opinions
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Learn in Public as a story · 44 points
HN discussion100 bytes: https://www.swyx.io/css-100-bytes (i collect a lot of these design advice. more: https://github.com/swyxio/spark-joy/ )
Comment linking /css-100-bytes
on “The least amount of CSS for a decent looking site (2023)”Submitted The Light and Dark Side of the API Economy as a story · 43 points
HN discussionI wrote my version here last year: https://www.swyx.io/css-100-bytes html { max-width: 70ch; padding: 3em 1em; margin: auto; line-height: 1.75; font-size: 1.25em; } if you have 100 more to spare: h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { margin: 3em 0 1em; } p,ul,ol { margin-bottom: 2em; color: #1d1d1d; font-family: sans-serif; } explanation in the blogpost
Comment linking /css-100-bytes
on “58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere”Submitted Slack Is Fumbling Developers as a story · 38 points
HN discussionAlso restated here: https://www.swyx.io/css-100-bytes
Comment linking /css-100-bytes
on “58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere”Submitted Why do Webdevs keep trying to kill REST? as a story · 37 points
HN discussionThis is similar advice to the concept of Luck Surface Area: https://www.swyx.io/create-luck#luck-surface-area do things and tell people. Good advice.
Comment linking /create-luck
on “Do things, tell people (2012)”Submitted Every Public Engineering Career Ladder as a story · 32 points
HN discussionthis is related to the idea of the luck surface area: https://www.swyx.io/create-luck#luck-surface-area
Comment linking /create-luck
on “Do things, tell people (2012)”Submitted The End of Localhost as a story · 19 points
HN discussion
