Top all-time · #301
Tom Preston-Werner
Personal blog · tom.preston-werner.com · on HN as mojombostartupsprogramming
Tom Preston-Werner's personal blog at tom.preston-werner.com covers startups and programming. Since 2008, 165 different Hacker News readers have linked it 208 times, most often “Readme Driven Development”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 15 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Tom Preston-Werner's blog mostly for 'The Git Parable', which commenters recommend as an intuitive explanation of how git works. Other posts are cited for GitHub's history and open source views.
- Recommended for · 15 comments
- Commenters say The Git Parable explains how git works best and tell readers to read it.
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?
- Readme Driven Development22 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2010-08-23
- Open Source (Almost) Everything22 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2011-11-22
- How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub19 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2008-10-20
- The Git Parable (building a Git-like system from the ground up)18 people · 25 mentions · first linked 2009-05-18
- Readme Driven Development (2010)15 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2019-11-23
- The Git Parable (2009)10 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2020-11-17
- Lessons from GitHub's First Year7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-03-29
- Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2008-11-17
- Optimize for Happiness (Followup to my Startup School talk)6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2010-10-18
- /6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2009-07-03
What Hacker News says?
http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-3...
Comment linking /2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-300k.html
on “Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub”Submitted Open Source (Almost) Everything as a story · 445 points
HN discussionA bit of interesting trivia: back in 2008, GitHub's founder (Tom Preston-Werner) declined to work for Microsoft when they bought his previous employer, Powerset: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-3...
Comment linking /2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-300k.html
on “Microsoft acquires Github”Submitted Farewell GitHub, Hello Immersive Computing as a story · 348 points
HN discussionI really hope this acquisition is good for the developer community. Also, I can’t help but notice the fact that Tom Preston-Werner, one of the co-founders of GitHub, had turned down an offer[0] from Microsoft 10 years ago and today they’ve announced the acquisition[1] by Microsoft. They really have come a full circle. Good luck to the team at GitHub! [0] http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-3..…
Comment linking /2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-300k.html
on “Microsoft acquires Github”Submitted How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub as a story · 295 points
HN discussionhttp://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-devel...
Comment linking /2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html
on “JIRA is an antipattern”Submitted How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub (2008) as a story · 276 points
HN discussionI am usually in the Open Source camp, but I don't think the choice is so easy here. Not only does GitLab copy GitHub, it does so by relying on a lot of Open Source sofware written by GitHub and/or GitHub employees. You may like GitHub or not, but you cannot deny they contribute a lot to Open Source. I am not entirely sure how much that has changed since his resignation, but here is Tom Preston-Werner's position on O…
Comment linking /2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html
on “GitLab Pages”Submitted Readme Driven Development as a story · 242 points
HN discussion"We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains. While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners). I doubt it will ever be clear what actually h…
Comment linking /2014/04/21/farewell-github-hello-immersive-computing.html
on “Results of the GitHub Investigation”Submitted Readme Driven Development (2010) as a story · 226 points
HN discussionhttp://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hel...
Comment linking /2014/04/21/farewell-github-hello-immersive-computing.html
on “Results of the GitHub Investigation”Submitted How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub as a story · 224 points
HN discussionTom Preston-Werner's response: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hel...
Comment linking /2014/04/21/farewell-github-hello-immersive-computing.html
on “Results of the GitHub Investigation”Submitted Lessons from GitHub's First Year as a story · 223 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of The Git Parable which helped me understand git when I was first getting started. I really do believe that you have to understand how git actually works under the UI in order to have long term success using it. Whether it's bad or good to need this understanding can be debated but I believe that it is truth. http://tom.preston-werner.com/2009/05/19/the-git-parable.htm...
Comment linking /2009/05/19/the-git-parable.html
on “Git from the inside out”Submitted Readme-Driven Development (2010) as a story · 217 points
HN discussionYou can think of Bases as an editor and visualization layer for the YAML frontmatter in your Markdown files. Frontmatter is not part of the original Markdown spec, but it became a standard way to add metadata to Markdown files long before Obsidian came along. I believe it started in 2008 with the introduction of Jekyll: https://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/11/17/blogging-like-a-ha... Frontmatter is supported by almos…
Comment linking /2008/11/17/blogging-like-a-hacker
on “Obsidian Bases”Submitted The Git Parable (building a Git-like system from the ground up) as a story · 147 points
HN discussionPerhaps the Git Parable will help: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2009/05/19/the-git-parable.htm... To provide an alternate viewpoint, I have never had trouble with Git. I’m a bottom-up how-does-this-thing-work sort of person so when I first started using Git, I sought to understand how it worked. That part of Git is pretty easy to understand. Knowing that made its CLI a lot easier to grok. Of course, at the time I w…
Comment linking /2009/05/19/the-git-parable.html
on “Write yourself a Git (2018)”Submitted The git parable as a story · 146 points
HN discussion> How is a legitimate startup supposed to recruit the best people under these conditions? So, I'm post-exit from a startup I founded. It was >10x on returns, but not a supermassive company. I've also been part of a few other exits now in various capacities. So let me just tell you: Startup founders get better stock than they give employees. They also often write themselves in super powers or special exit clauses. So…
Comment linking /2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-300k.html
on “My company sold for $100M and I got zilch – how can that be?”Submitted Looking Back on Selling Gravatar to Automattic as a story · 143 points
HN discussionThe concept of "Readme Driven Development" [1] seems similar, but smaller in scope. I've actually found it very pragmatic/productive to, especially for smaller libraries, start with writing the Readme. 1: https://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-deve...
Comment linking /2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html
on “Microsoft 3D Movie Maker Source Code”Submitted Blogging Like a Hacker (2008) as a story · 94 points
HN discussionThanks -- great article. This is the most readable and straight-forward explanation of git's internals that I've seen (and I've read a bunch of articles/books/etc. looking for resources to help others learn git). I'd also recommend The Git Parable ( http://tom.preston-werner.com/2009/05/19/the-git-parable.htm... ) for anyone who hasn't read it. Different focus, but also helpful for understanding git's philosophy.
Comment linking /2009/05/19/the-git-parable.html
on “Git Is Simpler Than You Think”Submitted How to Meet Your Next Cofounder as a story · 76 points
HN discussiongit works off of snapshots which are blobs, and blobs are compressed very effectively, but if your file takes 30KB compressed then yes, 30KB compressed is being added for every white space added[0]. Another way to think of it, if it was diffs, if you had 1000 commits, getting to the 'head' would take forever because it had to replay all the commits diffs just to get there. Yes, you could combine diffs & snapshots, b…
Comment linking /2009/05/19/the-git-parable.html
on “Git is too hard”Submitted Readme Driven Development as a story · 69 points
HN discussion
