Top all-time · #482
thecodist.com
Personal blog · thecodist.comprogrammingcareer
thecodist.com is a personal blog at thecodist.com about programming and career. Since 2007, 119 different Hacker News readers have linked it 199 times, most often “How Many People Does It Take to Ship Software?”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (29) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this long-running programming blog for career essays on age, burnout and management, and as a source of essays on programming.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called worth reading and a good essay; listed among blogs one commenter reads; another calls a trilogy of its posts very interesting.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 29 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- How Many People Does It Take to Ship Software?8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-04-07
- My Biggest Regret as a Programmer7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-04-06
- The Programming Steamroller Waits For No One (2013)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-02-09
- How Many Hours Can You Code?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-12-23
- Programming Is a Dead End Job4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-05-03
- Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This at 563 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-10-05
- Remaining Relevant over Four Decades3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-05
- The Story of My First Startup 30 Years Ago3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-11-22
- Interviews Can Be a Terrible Way to Identify Good Programmers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-05-05
- What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-05-04
What Hacker News says?
Unfortunately this person certainly wouldn't fit in at any organisation I ever worked for : http://thecodist.com/article/how-many-people-does-it-take-to... "The more people you have in any project the more communications you need, the more management you need, the slower information is disbursed and problems reported. You have to have more process to ensure that anything will be accomplished. Of course this all cost…
Comment linking /article/how-many-people-does-it-take-to-ship-software
on “My Biggest Regret as a Programmer”Submitted My Biggest Regret as a Programmer as a story · 1296 points
HN discussionHis other post about his view of the downside of being a programmer is also relevant here.. http://thecodist.com/article/programming_is_a_dead_end_job
Comment linking /article/programming_is_a_dead_end_job
on “My Biggest Regret as a Programmer”- qw · 2012-02-28
Submitted Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You as a story · 407 points
HN discussion He wrote a blog explaining it: https://thecodist.com/my-art-and-color-after-tiling/
Comment linking /my-art-and-color-after-tiling/
on “Geometric line-art of Wacław Szpakowski (2017)”Submitted How to Know When It's Time to Go as a story · 354 points
HN discussionWayyyyy too many :) A few months back I wrote a Reddit comment listing "just" the high-quality React-related blogs that I read : https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/5t8loz/what_are_yo... . I read a lot more besides that. To pick out just a few: - Scott Hanselman: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ - Robert O'Callahan: http://robert.ocallahan.org/ - Henrik Warne: https://henrikwarne.com/ - Andrew Wulf ("The Codist…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you follow?”Submitted Programming Is a Dead End Job as a story · 299 points
HN discussionI think that this is relevant... 'When I was on TV (Computer Chronicles) in early 1987 showing our product Trapeze the other presenter was Mike Slade who was product manager of Excel. At the time young me thought him some random marketing weenie (young people can be pretty stupid). Yet he started all these companies later including ESPN, worked for Apple in various leadership roles, was a good friend of Steve Jobs a…
Comment linking /article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer
on “Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path”Submitted Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This at 56 as a story · 214 points
HN discussionRelevant: http://thecodist.com/article/the_programming_steamroller_wai... “The Programming Steamroller Waits For No One“ Also: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ “Fire and Motion” The companies who stumble are the ones who spend too much time reading tea leaves to figure out the future direction of Facebook. People get worried about React and decide to rewrite their whole architecture for Rea…
Comment linking /article/the_programming_steamroller_waits_for_no_one
on “React Fire: Modernizing React DOM”- ks · 2014-02-08
Submitted Your Progress As A Programmer Is All Up To You as a story · 206 points
HN discussion They're not just algorithmic. There's a lot of manual effort in each image: https://thecodist.com/my-art-and-color-after-tiling/ , https://thecodist.com/why-i-use-swift-to-make-generative-art... > In my process, generation is supplemented by many manual processes, including image manipulation, digital painting, and occasionally even AI
Comment linking /why-i-use-swift-to-make-generative-art/
on “The Storm Hits the Art Market”Submitted What Writing and Selling Software Was Like in the 80s as a story · 188 points
HN discussionI use the Outline View in MS Word to organize my bookmarks. I use 4 levels: Heading - Subheading -- Link --- Text. (Note that each level is a separate line in MS Word Outline View.) An example: Education - Assessment -- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/magazine/why-flunking-exam... --- test and test often to focus the learners' minds Business - Insights -- http://thecodist.com/article/lessons_from_a_lifetime_of_bei…
Comment linking /article/lessons_from_a_lifetime_of_being_a_programmer
on “Designing a Personal Knowledgebase”Submitted How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer as a story · 173 points
HN discussionThe Koutnik links to this article, which inspired his essay. http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programm... . It was very painful to read, because I made exactly the same decision. I was VP/chief developer at a company that withered on the vine after a 10 year roller coaster ride at a software company that I had co-founded. I had two paths: I could have looked for a VP/Director job or I could have c…
Comment linking /article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer
on “Implementers, Solvers, and Finders”Submitted How Hotel Reservations Work as a story · 172 points
HN discussionI'm not saying this to try and discredit this post. However, there's a very interesting trilogy here: Oct 2012: Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This At 56 http://thecodist.com/article/yes_i_still_want_to_be_doing_th... Jul 2015: How I've Avoided Burnout During More Than Three Decades As A Programmer [this article] April 2016: My Biggest Regret As A Programmer [is not going into management] http://thecodist.com/article/…
Comment linking /article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer
on “How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer”Submitted The Biggest Difference Between Coding Today and When I Started in the 80s as a story · 164 points
HN discussionI've been doing it for two years and am barely past the "understand none of the words" phase. It helps to think of each term as an interesting puzzle. For example, SVD. It's fascinating if you dig into it. Most people don't want to, because it feels like work. For me, it's neat understanding ... whatever it is, ha. I think it's finding the basis eigenvectors in a higher dimensional space, which basically just means…
Comment linking /article/the_programming_steamroller_waits_for_no_one
on “Collaborative filtering doesn't work for us”Submitted Yes I Still Want to Be Doing This at 56 (2012) as a story · 157 points
HN discussionCorrect. 4 years after this 2012 article, he wrote this [2016] => http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programm... He laments how he quit Apple when it was going down, then Steve Jobs came along few months later and the rest is history. Also how his Sister went the management route and has 10x Assets etc. I wish I hadn't found this 2016 article because that makes me read this OP 2012 article in a whol…
Comment linking /article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer
on “Yes I Still Want to Be Doing This at 56 (2012)”Submitted Talking over a wall changed my direction as a programmer as a story · 147 points
HN discussionA contrary view: http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programm...
Comment linking /article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programmer
on “Yes I Still Want to Be Doing This at 56 (2012)”- ks · 2012-05-05
Submitted Interviews Can Be a Terrible Way to Identify Good Programmers as a story · 126 points
HN discussion http://thecodist.com/article/all-i-need-to-know-to-be-a-bett...
Comment linking /article/all-i-need-to-know-to-be-a-better-programmer-i-learned-in-kindergarten
on “Ask HN: What are the most inspirational blog posts you've ever read?”Submitted What Programmers Want Is Less Stupid And More Programming as a story · 113 points
HN discussionBut I don't think infrastructure/libraries can be considered "co-founders" A better way to express the utility he gets can be summed up in this article: "We Are All Open Source Billionaires" http://thecodist.com/article/we-are-all-open-source-billiona...
Comment linking /article/we-are-all-open-source-billionaires
on “My zero-equity co-founders”Submitted How Does Facebook Know What's In My Amazon Shopping Cart? as a story · 90 points
HN discussion
