Top all-time · #337
thoughtbot
Company blog · thoughtbot.com/blogprogrammingweb
thoughtbot is the company blog at thoughtbot.com, writing about programming and web. Since 2007, 159 different Hacker News readers have linked it 263 times, most often “Async Ruby on Rails”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link thoughtbot for practical Ruby, Rails, Git and Vim advice, often as a reference to posts on autosquash, force-with-lease and Brewfile. Upcase videos and the consulting playbook are also praised.
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.
Looking for a nearby developer? Hire thoughtbot, a design and development agency that provides design and development services for mobile and web applications.
Most-linked posts?
- /blog/chestertons-fence5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-05-09
- Async Ruby on Rails4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-06-07
- The magic behind configure, make, make install4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-02-01
- /jobs4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-05-21
- My Adventure with Async Ruby3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-01-23
- Tailwind vs. BEM3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-10-29
- Is AI ruining my brain?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-09-04
- Let's Not Misuse 'Refactoring'3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-10-31
- Bourbon: A simple and lightweight mixin library for Sass.3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-02-20
- Ruby Science by Thoughtbot3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-05-07
What Hacker News says?
The FUNDAMENTAL aspect and nature of ALL Software Engineering is: "Controlling Complexity" I dare say its the most important part of the "Engineering" in software engineering. 'Cognitive Load' is another way of saying this.. 1. programming => wiring shit together and something happens 2. software engineering => using experience, skills and user and fellow engineer empathy to iterate toward a sustainable mass of code…
Comment linking /blog/chestertons-fence
on “Cognitive load is what matters”Submitted Neat as a story · 375 points
HN discussionAn easy (ish) option here is to use autosquashing [1], which lets you create individual commits (saving your work - yay!) and then eventually clean em up into a single commit! Eg git commit -am “Starting work on this important feature” # make some changes git add . && git commit —-squash “I made a change” HEAD Then once you’re all done, you can do an auto squash interactive rebase and combine them all into your orig…
Comment linking /blog/autosquashing-git-commits
on “Debian bookworm live images now reproducible”Submitted Top Secret: Automatically filter sensitive information as a story · 126 points
HN discussionthoughtbot - Web Developer - Chicago, Austin Build great products while contributing to our community with open source, writing, speaking, events, and more. Our team works in a relaxed and educational environment. We use the latest technologies and embrace agile philosophies. Everything we do is predicated on having a great team and a culture of learning. We work a sustainable pace of 40 hours/week, consulting for c…
Comment linking /jobs/web
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)”Submitted Git 3.0 will use main as the default branch as a story · 96 points
HN discussionVim has supported jump to definition via `ctags` for decades, works great for Ruby. Here's a tutorial from ThoughtBot ( https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/videos/intelligent-navigation-... ). Vim also supports the same LSP implementations that VSCode uses via Coc.nvim ( https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim ), which provides the same code navigation features that VSCode has, including jump to definition.
Comment linking /upcase/videos/intelligent-navigation-with-ctags
on “Helix: a post-modern modal text editor”Submitted Reasons Not to Refactor as a story · 80 points
HN discussionPersonally, I'd prefer actual native if that was my aim, as opposed to something that looks exactly like it, but actually has layers of styling beneath it in order to look the same. Why? Because if I want the native look, I'm more inclined to be sensitive to my app's size and performance. That said, I do understand that many people want the seeming of a native app, even if there's a bit of a blowout in size and perf…
Comment linking /blog/examining-performance-differences-between-native-flutter-and-react-native-mobile-development
on “Flutter: a Portable UI Framework for Mobile, Web, Embedded, and Desktop”Submitted An Introduction to macOS Head Pointer as a story · 21 points
HN discussionhttps://ruby-concurrency.github.io/concurrent-ruby/1.1.5/Con... https://thoughtbot.com/blog/my-adventure-with-async-ruby First two hits on Google.
Comment linking /blog/my-adventure-with-async-ruby
on “RubyLLM: A delightful Ruby way to work with AI”Submitted Analyzing Minard's Visualization of Napoleon's 1812 March (2014) as a story · 19 points
HN discussion> My current workplace has rebase as part of their flow Not really sure what that means as rebase can be used in multiple ways, but you might want to try using: `--force-with-lease` instead of `--force` > This option allows one to force push without the risk of unintentionally overwriting someone else’s work https://thoughtbot.com/blog/git-push-force-with-lease
Comment linking /blog/git-push-force-with-lease
on “Git rebase in depth”Submitted Async Ruby on Rails as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI agree that Rails has a kind of a steep learning curve. Also agree that I didn't find the Rails Casts helpful - I found them out of date, so I didn't spend any time watching them. For me, learning how to learn a new thing at times seems like the hardest part for me. For Rails, the best I've found is the Michael Hartl tutorial [1]. He walks you through setting up a blog with Rails - first the quick way and then the…
Comment linking /blog/laptop-setup-for-an-awesome-development-environment
on “Don't make me think, or why I switched to Rails from JavaScript SPAs”Submitted Our books are now free as a story · 17 points
HN discussionNow that I think about it, languages that aren't subject-verb-object probably find OOP insane. I tried to find an example of this and found a somewhat related article about how Japanese grammar maps nicely onto ruby: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/learning-japanese-the-rubyist-wa...
Comment linking /blog/learning-japanese-the-rubyist-way
on “قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic”Submitted The magic behind configure, make, make install as a story · 15 points
HN discussionWhat is external behavior? Behavior of the user interface of the program or behavior of some other code? What is external? The term "refactoring" is commonly used in a way which includes changing of public interfaces. Random article, which even cites a book, agrees: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/lets-not-misuse-refactoring If you're developing a library, then refactoring shouldn't change public interfaces. If you're d…
Comment linking /blog/lets-not-misuse-refactoring
on “Unit Testing Is Overrated”Submitted You shouldn't build a mobile app as a story · 13 points
HN discussionthoughtbot | Web Developer | Austin, Boston, New York City, Raleigh, San Francisco | https://thoughtbot.com/jobs thoughtbot | Designer | Boston, New York City, Raleigh | https://thoughtbot.com/jobs thoughtbot | Design Director | London | https://thoughtbot.com/jobs thoughtbot designers and developers rapidly build high-quality web applications. Well-qualified designers and developers have excellent knowledge of HTML…
Comment linking /jobs
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2017)”Submitted A love letter to Objective-C as a story · 11 points
HN discussionCheck out Thoughtbot's "playbook" - https://thoughtbot.com/playbook - it's a thorough and up-to-date guide to running a consulting firm.
Comment linking /playbook
on “Ask HN: How do I start my own consulting firm?”Submitted Thoughtbot is pausing activity on X and Meta as a story · 10 points
HN discussionJust use git rebase --autosquash https://thoughtbot.com/blog/autosquashing-git-commits
Comment linking /blog/autosquashing-git-commits
on “Dura is a background process that watches your Git repositories”Submitted Type-driven design, test-driven design as a story · 10 points
HN discussionYou can do this already with git natively. https://thoughtbot.com/blog/autosquashing-git-commits
Comment linking /blog/autosquashing-git-commits
on “Dura is a background process that watches your Git repositories”Submitted Advanced PostgreSQL Tips for Pros as a story · 9 points
HN discussionMasswerks ( http://masswerks.com ) - Remote (USA preferred) - CTO Masswerks is a design and development consultancy for startups, high growth and enterprise companies. We've worked with companies like TalentBin (acq. by Monster), BuddyMedia (acq. by Salesforce), Frid.ge (acq. by Google) and many more. Up until now, most of our work has been focused on the front end - UI/UX and html/JS. We're looking to expand into s…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2015)”Submitted Why Rails in 2025? as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
