Top all-time · #5382
Tom McFarlin
Personal blog · tommcfarlin.comprogrammingcareer
Tom McFarlin's personal blog at tommcfarlin.com covers programming and career. Since 2010, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “Building Web Applications with WordPress - Tom McFarlin”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN links Tom McFarlin's posts on building web applications with WordPress and on AWS account risk. One commenter calls the WordPress web applications post a great read for non-programmers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
In the last decade, I’ve written extensively on software engineering in the context of WordPress, PHP, Databases, and other backend technology.
Most-linked posts?
- Building Web Applications with WordPress - Tom McFarlin2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-10-31
What Hacker News says?
> Github acts as a portfolio site for programmers. No [1] [2]. It is not your resume or your CV. You should be able to highlight projects or accomplishments on your CV - github gives you no control over the layout of your profile. > The usual refrain when doing hiring is "check a candidate's Github." (I'm assuming you mean something that they do rather than something they don't do) I'm not saying you can't look at b…
Comment linking /github-is-not-your-cv/
on “Using a single AWS account is a serious risk”Submitted My Experience with OAuth.io as a story · 34 points
HN discussionIf you'r a non-programmer, I'd suggest WordPress. There's a ton you can do w/ it [ http://tommcfarlin.com/web-applications-with-wordpress/ is a great read ].
Comment linking /web-applications-with-wordpress/
on “Non-programmer wants to build functioning prototype”Submitted You Probably Don't Need an Elaborate Task Management System as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Primer in Bash for WordPress Developers as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Maybe I’m Over Commenting Code (Are You?) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Does WordPress Encourage Poor Programming? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why I Prefer To Use Hungarian Notation as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Moving a git repository with git bundle as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reasons for Not Writing Unit Tests (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Digital Minimalism in 2022 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Should We Delete Old Repositories? (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building Web Applications with WordPress as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted On the Idea of Simplifying Our Tools as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Drafting Pseudocode Before Building Anything as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building Web Applications with WordPress - Tom McFarlin as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Going Above and Beyond The WordPress Coding Standards as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Someone Has Likely Already Written Your Blog Post as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted You Rarely Get Greenfield Projects (Or Do You?) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted No One Cares About Clean Code (Or Do They?) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted ChatGPT Wrecked Our Type of Content as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A WordPress Upgrade Doesn’t Break Your Site as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Digression on the State of WordPress as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Responsibility of Understanding Your IDE as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Spectrum of Open Source Philosophy as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Developer Fitness: Getting Back to and Staying in Shape as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted WordPress and Developer Maturity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The WordPress Community (A Comedy of Drama, Ego, Oligarchies, and More) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Becoming a World Class Programmer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reinventing the Wheel Is Okay as a story · 1 points
HN discussion