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tomayko.com
Personal blog · tomayko.comprogrammingweb
tomayko.com is a personal blog at tomayko.com about programming and web. Since 2007, 78 different Hacker News readers have linked it 94 times, most often “How I explained REST to my wife”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 11 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ryan Tomayko's blog for explanations of git (The Thing About Git), REST (Rest to my Wife), and Unix-style server design (Unicorn is Unix), plus management and blogging essays.
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?
- How I explained REST to my wife13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2008-08-18
- The Thing About Git8 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2008-04-08
- I like Unicorn (Rack HTTP server) because it's Unix7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2009-10-06
- Administrative Debris - Learning from Tufte5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2008-03-15
- Show How, Don't Tell What - A Management Style4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-04-02
- AWK-ward Ruby4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-04-26
- Your team should work like an open source project4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-11-19
- Things Caches Do (2008)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-11-17
- /src/rack-cache/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-02-24
- /writings/princexml2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-04-07
What Hacker News says?
I agree, but I get most of the same out of Ruby even if might be slightly less readable (or ugly Ruby code). It's nice that the mentality comes out of using certain languages though. also http://tomayko.com/writings/awkward-ruby
Comment linking /writings/awkward-ruby
on “Awk in 20 Minutes”Submitted What does "HREF" stand for? (2008) as a story · 219 points
HN discussionRebase is a powerful tool, and with great power comes great responsibility. It's easy to get stuff wrong with rebase, and it's also hard for most developers to get their heads around because it offers something that no other VCS does. I'm also very much reminded of http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git , except to extend it even further, most VCS will tell you "you should have not committed broken code or…
Comment linking /writings/the-thing-about-git
on “Stay away from rebase”Submitted How I explained REST to my wife as a story · 199 points
HN discussionThis isn't really an explanation of why git is better than subversion overall, but it was a pretty big eye-opener for me, and I'm definitely still learning the basics of git: http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git To sum up, git solves what Ryan Tomayko calls "The Tangled Working Copy Problem" with amazing ease. If you have a working copy filled with changes, git add --patch lets you pick and chose which fi…
Comment linking /writings/the-thing-about-git
on “Git Immersion”Submitted I like Unicorn (Rack HTTP server) because it's Unix as a story · 192 points
HN discussionIf you didn't already know that Ruby scripts can be written in a very similar way to awk, this makes for a good read. http://tomayko.com/writings/awkward-ruby
Comment linking /writings/awkward-ruby
on “Why you should learn just a little Awk - A Tutorial by Example”Submitted So, What Does "HREF" Stand For, Anyway? as a story · 159 points
HN discussionAgreed: don't know about you, but I picked that up from Ryan Tomayko's "The Thing About Git"[1] - some previous HN discussion on that, if anyone's curious[2]. [1] http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158008
Comment linking /writings/the-thing-about-git
on “Aha Moments When Learning Git”Submitted AWK-ward Ruby as a story · 124 points
HN discussionYes it does. Thank you for the explanation. For anyone unclear about REST, try this: http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife
Comment linking /writings/rest-to-my-wife
on “Announcing Backbone.js: Models, Collections and Views in 2.4kb”Submitted How I Explained REST to My Wife (2004) as a story · 115 points
HN discussionFeynman, I guess because he interacted a lot with laymen (an lay-women) knew that the knowledge frame of the audience is very important. If you think this is obvious, wait till you try to explain internet addresses, cloud storage, etc. to your mom (or grandma), or as in the well-known case ( http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife ) the REST protocol to your wife. It's very hard to estimate the level of explanat…
Comment linking /writings/rest-to-my-wife
on “Feynman on explanations”Submitted The Thing About Git as a story · 86 points
HN discussionAlthough intended for a different audience, I enjoyed this one when I read it: http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife
Comment linking /writings/rest-to-my-wife
on “The one true REST explanation”Submitted Things Caches Do (2008) as a story · 67 points
HN discussionHere's his writeup of his blog design: http://tomayko.com/writings/administrative-debris
Comment linking /writings/administrative-debris
on “I like Unicorn (Rack HTTP server) because it's Unix”Submitted Insects and Entropy as a story · 62 points
HN discussionhttp://tomayko.com/writings/that-dilbert-cartoon
Comment linking /writings/that-dilbert-cartoon
on “Setting up Sublime Text 2”Submitted Your team should work like an open source project as a story · 62 points
HN discussionThere's also Pocco (Python), Rocco (Ruby), and shocco (*sh) http://tomayko.com/linkings/67644cabf40a7aa32c2a99fda9a42e20
Comment linking /linkings/67644cabf40a7aa32c2a99fda9a42e20
on “Todos: a Backbone.js example Single-Page-App (with LocalStorage)”Submitted Show How, Don't Tell What - A Management Style as a story · 50 points
HN discussionOur team makeup is almost entirely "devs" (I call them Engineers — people who design, build, and ship software). A lot closer to 120 than 80. However your estimates a pretty far off in terms of people who work on dotcom — that number is much closer to 15. One of the more interesting sociological problems of software to me is this idea that more people equals faster movement. The only studies in this field prove the…
Comment linking /writings/adopt-an-open-source-process-constraints
on “Zen Writing Mode”Submitted Things Caches Do as a story · 48 points
HN discussionAnother good post that talks about git add -p is Ryan Tomayko's The Thing About Git[1]. [1]: http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git
Comment linking /writings/the-thing-about-git
on “My Git Habits”Submitted "How I Explained REST to My Wife" taken down because of gender-oriented nature as a story · 42 points
HN discussionYou may find this post interesting. Git means never having to say "you should have". http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git
Comment linking /writings/the-thing-about-git
on “The git parable”Submitted Why "require 'rubygems'" Is Wrong as a story · 41 points
HN discussionRyan Tomayko recommends Unicorn as a reference for Unix programming (primarily, signals and sockets): http://tomayko.com/writings/unicorn-is-unix I found Sinatra to be an interesting read (and specifically how it parses the app configuration into methods): http://github.com/sinatra/sinatra
Comment linking /writings/unicorn-is-unix
on “Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?”Submitted How I Explained REST to My Wife as a story · 38 points
HN discussion
