Top all-time · #1915
Glyph Lefkowitz
Personal blog · blog.glyph.improgrammingaicareer
Glyph Lefkowitz writes Deciphering Glyph, a personal blog at blog.glyph.im about programming, ai and career. Since 2022, 39 different Hacker News readers have linked it 87 times, most often “The Futzing Fraction”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-09, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Glyph Lefkowitz's posts on Python typing and speed, including compiling typed Python with Mypyc, installing Python on macOS, and using dataclasses by default.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Deciphering Glyph, the blog of Glyph Lefkowitz.
Most-linked posts?
- The Futzing Fraction4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-08-15
- A Bigger Database4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-04-03
- Get Your Mac Python from Python.org4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-08-29
- Stop Writing `__init__` Methods4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-04-18
- The Next Thing Will Not Be Big4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-02
- The Federation Deathmatch4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-11-03
- Against Innovation Tokens4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-07-04
- I'm not going to cryptographically sign my Git commits, and you shouldn't either4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-01-25
- Dates and Times and Types3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-06-08
- What Is Code Review For?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-04
What Hacker News says?
> The primary reason, in my opinion, is the vast majority of Python libraries lack type annotations (this includes the standard library). When type annotations are available, it's already possible to compile Python to improve performance, using Mypyc. See for example https://blog.glyph.im/2022/04/you-should-compile-your-python...
Comment linking /2022/04/you-should-compile-your-python-and-heres-why.html
on “Show HN: I built a hardware processor that runs Python”Submitted Programming Isn't Special as a story · 282 points
HN discussionRelatedly, this seems to be the best advice for installing and using Python on t he Mac. Probably applies to Windows as well. https://blog.glyph.im/2023/08/get-your-mac-python-from-pytho...
Comment linking /2023/08/get-your-mac-python-from-python-dot-org.html
on “Escaping from Anaconda's Stranglehold on macOS”Submitted What you've got is in fact a people problem as a story · 267 points
HN discussion> mypy won't make your Python faster Mypyc will do. See https://blog.glyph.im/2022/04/you-should-compile-your-python...
Comment linking /2022/04/you-should-compile-your-python-and-heres-why.html
on “Anthropic has made a large contribution to the Python Software Foundation”Submitted What would a serious AI product look like? as a story · 176 points
HN discussionYou reminded me of this article[0] where the author asks why not dataclasses by default? I am inclined to agree, dataclasses feel Pythonic in that they remove boilerplate with reasonable defaults (sorting, hashing, etc). [0] https://blog.glyph.im/2023/02/data-classification.html
Comment linking /2023/02/data-classification.html
on “Show HN: I mirrored all the code from PyPI to GitHub and analysed it”Submitted I think I'm done thinking about GenAI for now as a story · 169 points
HN discussionAre you writing code that gets reviewed by other people? Were code reviews hard in the past? Do your coworkers care about "code quality" (I mean this in scare quotes because that means different things to different people). Are you working more on operational stuff or on "long-running product" stuff? My personal headcanon: this tooling works well when built on simple patterns, and can handle complex work. This tooli…
Comment linking /2025/08/futzing-fraction.html
on “Coding Models Are Doing Too Much”Submitted R0ML's Ratio as a story · 77 points
HN discussion> If you are going to be super-strict with type-checking, wouldn’t it be best to switch to a statically typed language and get the performance gains as well? You can use type-checking to get better performance already, without leaving Python. See https://blog.glyph.im/2022/04/you-should-compile-your-python...
Comment linking /2022/04/you-should-compile-your-python-and-heres-why.html
on “Are you expected to run five Python type-checkers now?”Submitted Capitalism and Cozy Games as a story · 58 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Think I'm Done Thinking About GenAI for Now as a story · 43 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Best Line Length as a story · 42 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Grand Unified Theory of the AI Hype Cycle as a story · 31 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Think I'm Done Thinking About GenAI for Now as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted Software Needs to Be More Expensive as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted The "Dependency Cutout" Workflow Pattern as a story · 19 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stop Writing `__init__` Methods as a story · 19 points
HN discussionSubmitted I'm not going to cryptographically sign my Git commits, and you shouldn't either as a story · 19 points
HN discussionSubmitted I don’t think you should sign your Git commits as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unsigned Commits as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Futzing Fraction as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted Who Is Open Source About? as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Against Innovation Tokens as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stop Writing `__init__` Methods as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted The "Active Enum" Pattern as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Against Innovation Tokens as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bilithification as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Deciphering Glyph: Let Me Tell You a Secret as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
