Top all-time · #405
Yehuda Katz
Personal blog · yehudakatz.comprogrammingweb
Yehuda Katz writes Katz Got Your Tongue, a personal blog at yehudakatz.com about programming and web. Since 2008, 137 different Hacker News readers have linked it 223 times, most often “Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to use Vim was Wrong (2010)”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Linked as the source for Rails and Merb history, Ember's SproutCore roots, Ruby's method-call design and Vim learning advice. Most comments cite the posts as references rather than praise them.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- Called 'a good article' on Ruby's call syntax and 'spot on' for someone learning Vim.
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.
Long-form writing by Yehuda Katz, co-creator of Ember.js and serial Open Sourcerer.
Most-linked posts?
- Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to use Vim was Wrong (2010)19 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2010-07-29
- Ruby 2.0 Refinements in Practice7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2010-11-30
- Amber.js (formerly SproutCore 2.0) is now Ember.js (and released)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-12-12
- Rails and Merb Merge6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2008-12-23
- Together: The Merb Story5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-02-19
- Here's to the Next 3 Years (Yehuda Katz Moves On)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-09-14
- /2010/02/01/safebuffers-and-rails-3-0/5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-04-03
- Tokaido: My Hopes and Dreams4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-04-13
- JavaScript Needs Blocks4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-01-10
- Understanding "Prototypes" in JavaScript4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-08-13
What Hacker News says?
You forgot the link. :) http://yehudakatz.com/2016/10/11/im-excited-to-work-on-yarn-...
Comment linking /2016/10/11/im-excited-to-work-on-yarn-the-new-js-package-manager-2/
on “Yarn – A new package manager for JavaScript”Submitted What’s Up With All These Changes in Rails? as a story · 353 points
HN discussionSee also: · http://yehudakatz.com/2016/10/11/im-excited-to-work-on-yarn-... · https://yarnpkg.com/
Comment linking /2016/10/11/im-excited-to-work-on-yarn-the-new-js-package-manager-2/
on “Yarn – A new package manager for JavaScript”Submitted Announcing Amber.js as a story · 311 points
HN discussionFor what it's worth, I completely agree with the "crappy alias" thing, and wrote a lot about this topic back when I was working on Rails full time (example: http://yehudakatz.com/2009/03/06/alias_method_chain-in-model... ). Ruby eventually added `prepend`, which I demonstrated upthread, and is a genuinely generic, in-language solution to the problem you're talking about.
Comment linking /2009/03/06/alias_method_chain-in-models/
on “Larry Wall Unveils Perl 6.0.0”Submitted Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to Use Vim Was Wrong as a story · 309 points
HN discussionI'm in a similar position. I do use vim but only for the most basic of editing tasks. I certainly haven't made the switch - but I read this just the other day and it's at least addressing the issue that we have: http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi...
Comment linking /2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/
on “Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor”Submitted The Glimmer VM: Boots Fast and Stays Fast as a story · 292 points
HN discussion> I wrote a book on Merb and was an active contributor. It might be a situation where you see it differently because you were involved or benefiting from the way things unfolded > That said, the Rails vs Merb era was mostly good natured competition [...] wouldn't describe any of it as toxic Competition can be healthy, Rails vs Merb was anything but. Quotes from Yehuda himself: ••• "I was just so blinded by tribalism…
Comment linking /2020/02/19/together-the-merb-story/
on “Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover”Submitted JavaScript Needs Blocks as a story · 227 points
HN discussionI occasionally write JavaScript since 2007, experiment a lot last 5 years, red through ES5 specification several times. I've worked as C++, PHP, Python, Ruby developer. Experimented with a few languages. "JS" instead of "TypeScript" brings confusion. TS solves some issues and I've mentioned it, still typeof null //"object" Template literals interpolation helps but if string (not literal string) slips by it is a mess…
Comment linking /2011/08/12/understanding-prototypes-in-javascript/
on “ARM chips have an instruction with JavaScript in the name”Submitted The Irony of iPad: A Great Day For Open Technologies as a story · 206 points
HN discussionNo. Ember is a fork (conceptually, at least; I'm not sure about common code) of SproutCore: http://yehudakatz.com/2011/12/12/amber-js-formerly-sproutcor... Ember was Amber for about 2 days but changed due to a naming collision with another project. I really read too much Hacker News.
Comment linking /2011/12/12/amber-js-formerly-sproutcore-2-0-is-now-ember-js/
on “Announcing Backbone.js 1.0”Submitted Rails and Merb Merge as a story · 155 points
HN discussionWell, the first thing is like the post said: Ruby 1.9's string encoding support is much, much better. For more on this, see wycats' post here: http://yehudakatz.com/2010/05/17/encodings-unabridged/ Secondly, Rails 3 has some tricks up its sleeve, with things like the Rails Snowman: http://railssnowman.info/
Comment linking /2010/05/17/encodings-unabridged/
on “Rails 3.0: It's ready”Submitted Understanding "Prototypes" in JavaScript as a story · 144 points
HN discussionWhich is sort of ironic, given that Ember.js was originally called Sproutcore 2.0 [1]...But I digress. Props to Tom, Yehuda, and everyone else. I've been dithering over whether to get up to speed on Ember or React, but I feel like the 'Batteries Included' approach that Ember provides and the very aggressive approach to cruft removal is what's right for me. [1] http://yehudakatz.com/2011/12/12/amber-js-formerly-sprou…
Comment linking /2011/12/12/amber-js-formerly-sproutcore-2-0-is-now-ember-js/
on “Ember.js 2.0 Released”Submitted Here's to the Next 3 Years (Yehuda Katz Moves On) as a story · 143 points
HN discussionI remember reading the web page I linked to below some time late last year, and remembered thinking at the time I wished someone told me this when I first started learning vim some 18 years ago. To those who would say “that’s obvious; of course you learn vim incrementally”, I would simply say that having spoken to a number of vim users in the past, I never got that advice. Instead, I got a lot of advice about turnin…
Comment linking /2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/
on “Vim: revisited”Submitted Amber.js (formerly SproutCore 2.0) is now Ember.js (and released) as a story · 134 points
HN discussionI agree with the vast majority of what you've said. One thing worth noting is that there was a TREMENDOUS effort that I headed up in the Rails 3 era to very aggressively attempt to reduce the number of encoding-related problems in Rails, and to make sure that common mistakes produced clear error messages. I wrote two somewhat lengthy blog posts at the time[1][2] for a contemporary historical perspective just as the…
Comment linking /2010/05/17/encodings-unabridged/
on “Ruby 2.2.0 Released”Submitted Threads (in Ruby): Enough Already as a story · 116 points
HN discussionEmber is the PostgreSQL of JavaScript frameworks. Similar to the way Postgres has deep roots that trace back to Ingres[1] in the days before SQL was a solidly established standard, Ember traces it roots back to SproutCore[2] in the JS framework pre-historic era of 2010. And the same way PostgreSQL was seen as a second-tier or only "historically significant" open source database, the PostgreSQL team just kept at it,…
Comment linking /2011/12/12/amber-js-formerly-sproutcore-2-0-is-now-ember-js/
on “Guide to JavaScript Frameworks”Submitted My Common Git Workflow as a story · 113 points
HN discussionYou raise a good point. Good thing rails is so modular since version 3, replacing bits of it like this is completely trivial. Personally I'm more interested in the real 3.1 goodness: flushed responses. The implementation is fascinating. http://yehudakatz.com/2010/09/07/automatic-flushing-the-rail...
Comment linking /2010/09/07/automatic-flushing-the-rails-3-1-plan/
on “Rails 3.1 shipping with CoffeeScript”Submitted The Web Doesn't Suck. Browsers are Innovating. as a story · 111 points
HN discussionRuby doesn't block other waiting threads on IO https://yehudakatz.com/2010/08/14/threads-in-ruby-enough-alr...
Comment linking /2010/08/14/threads-in-ruby-enough-already/
on “Optimizing Your Web App 100x Is Like Adding 99 Servers”Submitted Understanding JavaScript function invocation and "this" as a story · 100 points
HN discussionIndeed, for those of us who missed it, they had a poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3335916 and Yehuda announced the change yesterday: http://yehudakatz.com/2011/12/12/amber-js-formerly-sproutcor...
Comment linking /2011/12/12/amber-js-formerly-sproutcore-2-0-is-now-ember-js/
on “Announcing Amber.js”Submitted Learning Vim incrementally (2010) as a story · 96 points
HN discussion
