Top all-time · #278
The $40,000,000 Blunt From Mars
Personal blog · stilldrinking.orgcultureprogrammingwriting
The $40,000,000 Blunt From Mars is a personal blog at stilldrinking.org about culture, programming and writing. Since 2011, 174 different Hacker News readers have linked it 229 times, most often “Programming Sucks (2014)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link stilldrinking.org mainly for the Programming Sucks essay, a wry, funny take on software work that commenters find relatable and worth reading.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Called entertaining, pretty funny and a great read; one commenter's favourite; another says it should be on any list.
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?
- Programming Sucks (2014)66 people · 88 mentions · first linked 2016-08-29
- Programming Sucks (2014)38 people · 41 mentions · first linked 2014-10-15
- Programming Sucks11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2014-04-29
- Interviewing is Broken5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-12-30
- /the-episode-part-14 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-07-16
- Generation Byte4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-01-21
- /the-episode-part-13 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-07-18
- AI Is Not the Problem3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-08
- Nobody Understands Punctuation3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-09-24
- How to Worry Less About Being a Bad Programmer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-05-27
What Hacker News says?
I absolutely love reading Justine's code. It comes up from time to time here and it just makes me happy. It reminds me of the passage from "Programming Sucks" by Still Drinking [1] Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It’s a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wro…
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Show HN: Redbean – Single-file distributable web server”Submitted Coffee Is Hard as a story · 768 points
HN discussionhttps://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks I'll add: Generally, everything works just as well as it needs to, and no better.
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Panic at the Job Market”Submitted Nobody. Understands. Punctuation. as a story · 418 points
HN discussionSame, one of the best things I've read. It may rank above Programming Sucks[1] which is my go to reference for friends when they ask me to explain to them what it is I do. 1. http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “What Is Code?”Submitted Programming Sucks as a story · 314 points
HN discussionReminds me of this: > Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses. There's a team at a…
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “GitLab Database Incident – Live Report”Submitted How to Worry Less About Being a Bad Programmer as a story · 164 points
HN discussionI think that the UI/UX conflation is inevitable, as developers should have skills in both areas, similarly to how DevOps is becoming more and more popular (though it also has its opponents). I'd argue that being able to write your code but not knowing how it runs isn't entirely viable, since one might influence the other - same goes for UI and UX. Both should be considered, even if i'd prioritize UX above UI. > You…
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar”Submitted Stop talking to technology executives like they have anything to say as a story · 100 points
HN discussionAs an aeronautical engineer (structural dynamics, aeroelasticity, stress analysis, etc.), I can definitely validate this claim--at least partially. At the lowest level, things are definitely a horrific mosaic of "temporary solutions, strung together by proverbial duct tape". The good news is that there's a good bit of oversight. Even if my analysis on a flight-critical component is a complete and total abuse of phys…
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?”Submitted Programming Sucks (2014) as a story · 91 points
HN discussionhttp://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?”Submitted Take Better Screenshots as a story · 87 points
HN discussion> All code is bad. Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It’s a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wrote it, sometimes they found it and knew they had to save it. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty, then the tears turn bitter as they remember the r…
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Software Architecture Guide”Submitted Programming Sucks as a story · 55 points
HN discussionI frequently find the essays on stilldrinking.org entertaining. My favorite is still the one on why eCigarettes suck. https://www.stilldrinking.org/seriously-make-a-better-ecigar...
Comment linking /seriously-make-a-better-ecigarette
on “Coffee Is Hard”Submitted Things I Send to Recruiters as a story · 38 points
HN discussionI would also recommend his story about acid to anyone https://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1
Comment linking /the-episode-part-1
on “Coffee Is Hard”Submitted Programming Sucks as a story · 28 points
HN discussionNever read the book, but I'm a fan of his blog! I keep an excerpt of one of his posts pinned on my notes app: "The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad." https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Coffee Is Hard”Submitted Programming Sucks (2014) as a story · 22 points
HN discussionProbably worth noting that he also wrote the very well done "Programming Sucks" article, https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks and the original HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667825 . If you hadn't read that post, definitely worth it.
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Coffee Is Hard”Submitted Trolling Marketers for Profit and Pleasure as a story · 20 points
HN discussionIt’s bigger than a joke but pretty funny: http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks Money quote: “Also, the bridge was designed as a suspension bridge, but nobody actually knew how to build a suspension bridge, so they got halfway through it and then just added extra support columns to keep the thing standing, but they left the suspension cables because they’re still sort of holding up parts of the bridge[…] Wo…
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?”Submitted The Problem with Bill Gates as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThe first article that comes to mind for me is Programming Sucks, although it's not quite the same as your description. https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “I Want Off Mr. Golang's Wild Ride”Submitted Sick of Your Shit, Apple as a story · 16 points
HN discussionAbstractions are, in their way, new things, and introduce further fiddliness. Consider these pieces of eternal wisdom from our industry: - https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks - https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 The author suggests that similar problems are a feature of pretty much everything humans do.
Comment linking /programming-sucks
on “Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)”Submitted Interviewing is Broken as a story · 13 points
HN discussion
