Top all-time · #2113
Avdi Grimm
Personal blog · avdi.org/devblogprogrammingcareer
Avdi Grimm's personal blog at avdi.org covers programming and career. Since 2008, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 51 times, most often “Why Go Matters”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Avdi Grimm's talk slides and posts on Ruby exceptions, confident code, functional style, and Java design patterns, mostly as sources or background for discussion.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
They've taken their toll, these latter days.
Most-linked posts?
- Why Go Matters2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-11-13
- Demeter: It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-07-05
What Hacker News says?
Hi HN. If you get some value out of these slides, great! But please, do me a favor: don't try too hard to construct a narrative from a stack of slides which: a) represent about 15% of the actual semantic content of the presentation; and b) are shaped by the consideration that there's a limit to how much code you can put on a slide and have it still be readable. A lot of this material has been covered in more detail…
Comment linking /devblog/2011/05/30/null-objects-and-falsiness/
on “Confident Code”Submitted Your Code is My Hell as a story · 287 points
HN discussionYou know, I've learned something today! When some people talk about functional programming, they talk about monads and iterating with recursion and lambda calculus. Other people talking about functional programming mean using data-oriented abstractions, where functions operate on data in well-defined ways, to avoid state and interlocked dependencies[3]. I've been calling the latter a "functional style", but clearly…
Comment linking /talks/confident-code-2010-01-12/confident-code.html
on “Functional Programming Is Hard, That's Why It's Good”Submitted Confident Code as a story · 265 points
HN discussionHere are the slides from the presentation on the same topic given by Avdi. http://avdi.org/talks/exceptional-ruby-2011-02-04/
Comment linking /talks/exceptional-ruby-2011-02-04/
on “I just released an eBook about exceptions and failure handling in Ruby”Submitted Stop reading this blog and learn something as a story · 145 points
HN discussionAvdi Grimm responded [0] to this (relatively old) article with what I think is a salient point: traditional design patterns are good, but Java makes expressing these design patterns very obtuse and heavy-handed. Nick Kallen conflates using intelligent design patterns with calling out every use of said design patterns in bold-face. Writing Java feels like "now I'm going to make a Factory Factory ! See, it says Factor…
Comment linking /devblog/2010/02/09/everything-you-love-about-java-is-everything-i-love-about-good-design/
on “Why I love everything you hate about Java”Submitted Using “and” and “or” in Ruby as a story · 87 points
HN discussionSubmitted Letter to a Young Developer as a story · 41 points
HN discussionSubmitted RSpec is for the literate as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSubmitted You keep using that word “distributed”… as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSubmitted Simplicity is Complicated as a story · 28 points
HN discussionSubmitted Turn on, tune in, drop out as a story · 25 points
HN discussionSubmitted Monkeypatching is Destroying Ruby as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted Demeter: It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law. as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted I don’t care about your corporate perks as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Everything old... as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Design Pattern Classifier as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Things programmers preach but don’t practice as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Do we need constants? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Agile is whatever you want it to be as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Your code is broken, and Ruby can help you fix it as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Overriding the Backtick in Ruby as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rehabilitating the professional rock star as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stop reading this blog and learn something as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted There is no such thing as a good field programmer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Demeter: It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law. as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Coding Wasteland - Technical Debt vs. Technical Waste as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Linux as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted NoneSuch: The Greatest Ruby Gem EVAR as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
