Top all-time · #1053
zwischenzugs.com
Personal blog · zwischenzugs.com · on HN as zwischenzugprogrammingsystems
zwischenzugs.com is a personal blog at zwischenzugs.com about programming and systems. Since 2017, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 202 times, most often “Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Anatomy of a Linux DNS Lookup7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-06-09
- Five Things I Did to Change a Team's Culture7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2018-02-25
- ‘AWS vs. K8s’ Is the New ‘Windows vs. Linux’5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-03-25
- My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2017-12-02
- Why Are Enterprises So Slow?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-10-02
- GitOps Decisions4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-12-01
- Show HN: Project Management as Code with Graphviz3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-12-18
- The Halving of the Centre: Covid and Its Effect on London Property3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-07-25
- Unprivileged Docker Builds – A Proof of Concept3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-04-23
- Bash History Shortcuts You Will Use3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-08-25
What Hacker News says?
https://zwischenzugs.com
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on “An Unbelievable Demo”Submitted Things I Wish I'd Known About Bash as a story · 781 points
HN discussionIt's not awesome, but I write posts on whatever interests me: https://zwischenzugs.com/ Most popular posts on HN include: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/04/04/things-i-learned-managin... https://zwischenzugs.com/2019/03/25/aws-vs-k8s-is-the-new-wi... https://zwischenzugs.com/2019/11/27/the-first-non-bullshit-b... https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/10/02/why-are-enterprises-so-s... https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/10/15/my-20…
Comment linking /2017/10/15/my-20-year-experience-of-software-development-methodologies/
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Key Git Concepts Explained the Hard Way as a story · 361 points
HN discussionIan Miell's blog https://zwischenzugs.com
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on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted The first non-bullshit book about culture I've read as a story · 358 points
HN discussionI posted about some 'God-like' bash shortcuts here: https://zwischenzugs.com/2019/08/25/seven-god-like-bash-hist... Number 6 was a 'refer to current line' one. There are so many ways to do these things that it's hard to get them all under your fingers though. Most of the time I tab my way through the 'problem' anyway.
Comment linking /2019/08/25/seven-god-like-bash-history-shortcuts-you-will-actually-use/
on “Renaming files with mv without typing the name two times”Submitted Ansible Techniques I Wish I’d Known Earlier as a story · 346 points
HN discussionAnother plug: I wrote about using Graphviz for representing project management dependencies in code and collaborating with my team here: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/12/18/project-management-as-co... The OP page is a really great intro, I could have used it as a reference when I was doing that work.
Comment linking /2017/12/18/project-management-as-code-with-graphviz/
on “Create diagrams with code using Graphviz”Submitted Git log – The good parts as a story · 338 points
HN discussionWe reduced the stress of on-call by introducing processes that supported creativity and reduced panic: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/04/04/things-i-learned-managin...
Comment linking /2017/04/04/things-i-learned-managing-site-reliability-for-some-of-the-worlds-busiest-gambling-sites/
on “Prime Down: Amazon’s sale day turns into fail day”Submitted Strace – My Favourite Secret Weapon (2011) as a story · 311 points
HN discussionBest overview of containerization is here (the video parody is actually funny, perhaps NSFW): https://zwischenzugs.com/2016/04/12/hitler-uses-docker-annot...
Comment linking /2016/04/12/hitler-uses-docker-annotated/
on “Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A”Submitted Things I Wish I'd Known Before Using Vagrant as a story · 304 points
HN discussionI wrote about related subjects here: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/04/04/things-i-learned-managin... Specifically here, the importance of: - allocating budget to the maintenance of knowledge - rotating the responsibility for maintenance around the group - co-locating the knowledge store with the day-to-day tooling, even if that doesn't conform to document management ideals
Comment linking /2017/04/04/things-i-learned-managing-site-reliability-for-some-of-the-worlds-busiest-gambling-sites/
on “Ask HN: Good ways to capture institutional knowledge?”Submitted If you want to transform IT, start with finance as a story · 293 points
HN discussion'How to teach Git' was something I had to think a lot about when a lot of my technical colleagues didn't know what a rebase was, and asked me to sort out their 12-team merge history (the 'git log --graph --oneline' spanned the width of multiple pages before you could see any commit message at all). I realised that there's a point you can't progress beyond with git without having to do some thinking and learning. And…
Comment linking /2019/01/09/git-hooks-the-hard-way/
on “How to teach Git”Submitted Why Are Enterprises So Slow? as a story · 290 points
HN discussionThat's funny. Just yesterday I wrote a blog post that mentioned telerobotics [1], as I've become interested in how the global economy has changed since 1990. The book I was reading that inspired it (which I thoroughly recommend) [2] talked about how telerobotics was going to help break down the last of three constraints on globalisation: moving people. The other two are: cost of movement of goods (1st modern industr…
Comment linking /2020/07/13/why-do-we-have-dev-rels-now/
on “Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design”Submitted How and why I run my own DNS servers as a story · 268 points
HN discussionRead up on https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/03/26/git-log-the-good-parts/ , it’s good and practical stuff. I recently aliased `git history` to `git log --graph --all --simplify-by-decoration`, and have `glog` as `log --graph` (and so seldom use `log`). If you’re earlier than Git 2.12 or so, you’ll need to add --decorate to get the branch and tag names shown.
Comment linking /2018/03/26/git-log-the-good-parts/
on “Why SQLite Does Not Use Git”Submitted “Who Should Write the Terraform?” as a story · 222 points
HN discussionHow to reduce time spent on incidents that were somewhat similar when managing an SRE team. It took seven months of full-time work writing documentation to get off the ground. I wrote about it here: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/04/04/things-i-learned-managin... The hard bit of it was the leap of faith - I had to stop working on live issues to invest the time in getting the documentation to critical mass. Then we ha…
Comment linking /2017/04/04/things-i-learned-managing-site-reliability-for-some-of-the-worlds-busiest-gambling-sites/
on “Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?”Submitted It’s great to be a consultant as a story · 222 points
HN discussionI gave up on formal career advancement (ie climbing the greasy pole) and followed my technical interests, trying to have fun where possible, but also with an eye to its marketability. I ended up starting a blog ( https://zwischenzugs.com/ ) and wrote a few books. It's all made my career far more fun and given me more control. As a by-product I'm better paid too. But that was not the aim.
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on “Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?”Submitted My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies as a story · 221 points
HN discussionInteresting piece. I wrote a similar one recently about the effects of an office exodus on central London property. So far some of my predictions have come to pass, eg paradoxical mini property boom outside London https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/07/25/the-halving-of-the-centr...
Comment linking /2020/07/25/the-halving-of-the-centre-covid-and-its-effect-on-london-property/
on “Why do so many people want us back in the office?”Submitted ‘AWS vs. K8s’ Is the New ‘Windows vs. Linux’ as a story · 202 points
HN discussionIf it's an enterprise ( https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/10/02/why-are-enterprises-so-s... ) the latter will be a much easier sell to management. Paying for support is a given but contributing developer time will require many approvals from different departments if it can be done at all.
Comment linking /2018/10/02/why-are-enterprises-so-slow/
on “Third High Severity CVE in Log4j Is Published”Submitted Surprising Bash Variables as a story · 200 points
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