Top all-time · #24941
The Punchtape Letters
Personal blog · punchlet.wordpress.comprogrammingphilosophy
The Punchtape Letters is a personal blog at punchlet.wordpress.com about programming and philosophy. Since 2021, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 5 times, most often “Header Guards – Underscoring Human Frailty”. The last post was in 2011, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link this blog for posts on programming conventions, such as the debate over underscores in names, and for a post about blogging. The comments do not praise or judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Musings on programming from an elder tempter
Most-linked posts?
- Header Guards – Underscoring Human Frailty3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-10-22
What Hacker News says?
Quite right. I have never understood this obsession that people have with underscores. Here's something I wrote about them some time ago: https://punchlet.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/letter-the-second/
Comment linking /2009/12/01/letter-the-second/
on “Convert macros to functions in the Python C API”Submitted Header Guards – Underscoring Human Frailty as a story · 2 points
HN discussioni wrote blogs simply becauase i enjoy writing and having fun, and i would have thought that is the primary motivator for most bloggers. and i really enjoyed writing training courses. given up now because of health and other problems. a couple of mine: https://latedev.wordpress.com/ https://punchlet.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/hello-world/
Comment linking /2009/12/01/hello-world/
on “Some Blogging Myths”Submitted Letter the Second as a story · 1 points
HN discussionthe problem is the length of the variable/enum names. if they were shorter, the problem would be much more obvious - as it is the code is unreadable. the lengths of names of entities, in any programming language, should be related to their scope - small scope, small names. and as limiting scope is what you should be doing all the time, almost all names should be short. also, unless you really know what you are doing…
Comment linking /2009/12/01/letter-the-second/
on “Named Booleans prevent C++ bugs and save you time”