Top all-time · #694
The Buckblog
Personal blog · weblog.jamisbuck.orgprogramming
The Buckblog is a personal blog at weblog.jamisbuck.org about programming. Since 2007, 92 different Hacker News readers have linked it 139 times, most often “Maze-generation algorithms, with JS demos”. The last post was in 2016, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link his maze-generation series for its algorithm survey and demos, plus his Ruby and dependency-injection posts. Commenters call the series fantastic and excellent.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Called a 'fantastic series' and 'excellent series', a 'great resource', with 'nice demos' and a 'good blog'
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?
- Maze-generation algorithms, with JS demos13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2011-02-07
- LEGOs, Play-Doh, and Programming8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2008-11-09
- Maze Generation: Eller's Algorithm5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-12-29
- Coming home to Vim4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-10-11
- /2006/10/18/skinny-controller-fat-model4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-01-12
- Maze Generation: Algorithm Recap (2011)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-07-16
- Maze Generation: Weave mazes3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-03-04
- 15 Great Maze Generation article with HTML5 demo3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-09-12
- Maze Generation: Recursive Backtracking3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-12-28
- /2010/12/29/maze-generation-eller-s-algorithm3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-07-09
What Hacker News says?
The articles on his blog ( http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/ ) give more in-depth explanations for those who dislike the slides.
Comment linking /
on “"Algorithm" is not a four letter word”Submitted Don't Assume It's Difficult Until It Is as a story · 153 points
HN discussionI wasn't at RubyConf 2004 (back then I thought Ruby was some weird Perl-ish language from Japan, not worth my attention) but for my RailsConf talk I dug up some old blog posts about what it was like when DDH first spoke about Rails at that conference. Jamis Buck was there: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2004/10/2/rubyconf-day-two Francis Hwang: http://fhwang.net/2004/10/03/RubyConf-2004-Day-2 It's amazing how few peopl…
Comment linking /2004/10/2/rubyconf-day-two
on “Today Rails turns 10 years old”Submitted The Dynamic Def – abusing Ruby's def statement as a story · 141 points
HN discussionLooks good! I found this to be a great resource on Maze generation: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorit...
Comment linking /2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorithm-recap
on “Rooms and Mazes: A Procedural Dungeon Generator”Submitted Maze Generation: Wilson's algorithm as a story · 101 points
HN discussionI think the short answer is that the maze will look very different. It's very possible that the verts of the maze would be in exactly the same position, since that's a regular pattern. But the maze walls will be extremely random. Maybe the best way to get a feel for it is to take a look at this page of maze generators: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorit...
Comment linking /2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorithm-recap
on “This maze looks familiar”Submitted Generating random mazes with the Growing Tree algorithm (w/ Javascript demo) as a story · 86 points
HN discussionInteresting article. I found it a bit strange that he didn't link to or reference this: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2008/10/10/coming-home-to-vim which shares the exact same title.
Comment linking /2008/10/10/coming-home-to-vim
on “Coming Home to Vim”Submitted Maze Generation: Eller's Algorithm as a story · 85 points
HN discussionWell, the big one is GC. Here are a few others: - both polymorphic variants and GADTs are extremely powerful mechanisms to let you keep track of invariants, in a manner that cannot be replicated readably in Rust so far; - OCaml's pattern-matching is a bit more flexible than Rust's ; - (thanks to the GC) OCaml's closures are much more flexible than Rust closures; - I guess OCaml's blindingly fast exceptions can be us…
Comment linking /2010/12/29/maze-generation-eller-s-algorithm
on “OCaml 4.10”Submitted Ideas are Cheap as a story · 67 points
HN discussionhttp://weblog.jamisbuck.org/ or if you click on the name of the algorithm in the url you posted it brings you to the blog post about it.
Comment linking /
on “Algorithms for making more interesting mazes”Submitted Jamis Buck lets go of Capistrano as a story · 62 points
HN discussionTo elaborate on userbinator's comment, you want to think of your format as a set of definitions: A clause consists of a '{', one or more key-value pairs, and a '}'. A key-value pair consists of a string and a value. A value is either a string or a clause. Now turn each definition into a function. Here's a nice-looking article from Googling for "writing a recursive descent parser": http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2015/7/…
Comment linking /2015/7/30/writing-a-simple-recursive-descent-parser.html
on “Show HN: How to write a tiny compiler”Submitted Maze-generation algorithms, with JS demos as a story · 57 points
HN discussionThis other referenced article helped me figure out why this was a big deal: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2010/12/29/maze-generation-eller... Basically, you can lazily generate a maze of infinite length . That's pretty cool.
Comment linking /2010/12/29/maze-generation-eller-s-algorithm
on “Eller’s Algorithm (2012)”Submitted Maze Generation: Weave mazes as a story · 47 points
HN discussionBecause that's the title of this blog post: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/10/18/skinny-controller-fat... The only times 'fat' and 'skinny' are mentioned in the title.
Comment linking /2006/10/18/skinny-controller-fat-model
on “MVC is dead, it's time to MOVE on (2012)”Submitted Coming home to Vim as a story · 47 points
HN discussionHaven't read the book, but the author wrote multiple blog entries about different maze generation algorithms[0] prior to its publishing which I found personally useful. [0] http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/archives.html (the maze posts date from early 2011)
Comment linking /archives.html
on “Maze Generator”Submitted Maze Generation: Recursive Division (2011) as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI had a lot of fun working through this in the context of building mazes, e.g. http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2015/11/28/upsilon-mazes.html (not the author, just a guy who bought his book)
Comment linking /2015/11/28/upsilon-mazes.html
on “Hexagonal Grids”Submitted Maze Generation: Kruskal's Algorithm as a story · 42 points
HN discussionThis article is more complete and more interactive: https://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/2/7/maze-generation-algori... Code for generating mazes in different languages can be found here: https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Maze_generation
Comment linking /2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorithm-recap
on “Generating Mazes”Submitted Ideas are Cheap as a story · 31 points
HN discussion> As far as IoC containers are concerned, I don't see > Ruby/Python communities using it, mainly because half of > it is fighting static typing. Exactly. Jim Weirich gave a presentation on DI 2005 http://onestepback.org/articles/depinj/index.html also see a nice writeup by the Jamis Buck—the author of a couple of DI frameworks: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2008/11/9/legos-play-doh-and-pro... http://weblog.jamisbuck.o…
Comment linking /2008/11/9/legos-play-doh-and-programming
on “If you're using Node.js, you're doing life wrong”Submitted Generating Word Search Puzzles as a story · 29 points
HN discussionA few years back Jamis Buck did a survey of maze generation algorithms: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorit... . The different algorithms seem to create mazes with different 'feels' to them. For instance recursive division algorithm appears more blocky and some have more dead ends than others. This d3 generator appears to be toothy (lots of short dead ends) on the right edge of the maze.
Comment linking /2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorithm-recap
on “Solving a Maze with D3.js”Submitted Coming home to Vim as a story · 19 points
HN discussion
