Top all-time · #1077
Brandon Rhodes
Personal blog · rhodesmill.org/brandonprogramming
Brandon Rhodes writes Rhodes Mill, a personal blog at rhodesmill.org about programming. Since 2009, 62 different Hacker News readers have linked it 76 times, most often “Semantic Linefeeds (2012)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 6 of 33 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Brandon Rhodes's blog mainly for his one-sentence-per-line (semantic linefeeds) essay, and also for his Python and astronomy work such as Skyfield, and his talks.
- Recommended for · 6 comments
- Called an excellent, fantastic orator with great talks; listed as a favorite blog; Ptolemy model pages called fascinating; an article called interesting.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 33 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Semantic Linefeeds (2012)9 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2019-02-26
- One sentence per line, please7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2012-04-03
- Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)6 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2019-10-07
- PyEphem: Basic Astronomical Computations for Python4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-05-05
- The Clean Architecture in Python (2014)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-07-11
- Skyfield: Elegant Astronomy for Python3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-03-02
- PyEphem - Scientific-grade astronomical computations in Python2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-10
- Talks by Brandon Rhodes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-11-14
What Hacker News says?
It turns out that there is a lot of discourse out there about "semantic newlines", under a few different names. So far the names I've seen are: - One Sentence Per Line (OSPL) - Semantic Line Breaks (SemBr) - Semantic Linefeeds - Ventilated Prose - Semantic newlines Reading through the pages below was helpful in getting a better idea of what language people use to discuss this. They're mostly historical retrospective…
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line
on “Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax”Submitted Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) as a story · 592 points
HN discussionhttps://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/ is one possibility. And discusses a Kernighan Unix memo from 1974 advocating for the practice. "UNIX for Beginners" https://web.archive.org/web/20130108163017if_/http://miffy.t... (PDF)
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
on “Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax”Submitted Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) as a story · 411 points
HN discussionIf you want PRs, I suggest you set up Semantic Linefeeds* sooner, rather than later. Each sentence gets its own line, and it really helps avoid merge conflicts. * https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
on “Operating System in 1,000 Lines – Intro”Submitted Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) as a story · 253 points
HN discussionSome previous discussion of this writing/coding style (though not of this particular page, which didn't go online until today): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31695393 https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4642395 http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/writings/2015-05-13better-writing-...
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
on “Writing one sentence per line”Submitted One sentence per line, please as a story · 101 points
HN discussionMy personal sweet-spot for writing technical documents these days is Asciidoctor with semantic line breaks [1]. There are some warts in the asciidoc syntax but it covers a lot more of the features I need for the types of documents I'm writing compared to Markdown. [1] https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
on “Pandoc”Submitted Animating Ptolemy's Equant with Python, SVG, and CSS as a story · 68 points
HN discussionRelated to GP, here's an interesting article: https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
Comment linking /brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
on “Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)”Submitted Ubuntu Python: raise an exception, import 190 modules as a story · 62 points
HN discussionBrandon Rhodes -- http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/ Excellent speaker and has recorded some great talks on structuring your code.
Comment linking /brandon/
on “Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?”Submitted Python multiprocessing is different under Linux and Windows as a story · 36 points
HN discussionJust want to give props to the skyfield python library. I have no idea what any of the numbers in the TLE mean but just by following some examples have been able to plot the location of Starlink satellites vs time very easily. https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/ I’m feeding it into Graphana to help visualize how satellite coverage impacts the signal strength and network performance of my dish. It’s pretty fun.
Comment linking /skyfield/
on “Low Earth Orbit Visualization”Submitted Semantic Linefeeds (2012) as a story · 34 points
HN discussion> Is there any open-source software that calculates where a given planet or star might be (based on your coordinates) Sure. Skyfield is a python library to calculate that (among others). Right on the front page is an example how to calculate the azimuth and elevation of Mars: https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/
Comment linking /skyfield/
on “Custom telescope mount using harmonic drives and ESP32”Submitted How to teach to code (a different approach) as a story · 9 points
HN discussionRegarding writing "one-sentence-per-line", I've noticed that style before in LaTeX. While I don't use that style, one advantage that I like is the ability to include comments on the sentence level in LaTeX. So instead of this: First sentence. Second sentence. % Comment on first sentence. I can write: First sentence. % Comment on first sentence. Second sentence. (Of course, one could define a new TeX macro that doesn…
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
on “Write HTML Right”Submitted WSGI and Truncated Chunked Response Bodies as a story · 5 points
HN discussionOnce I read "Semantic Linefeeds" ( http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/ ) I've been experimenting with breaking on punctuation. Yes, it makes the raw text looks a bit odd (check the source on http://boston.conman.org/2015/04/16.1 ) but I've found it much easier to edit (especially when my girlfriend emails me corrections like spelling errors, typos, incorrect grammar, etc).
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
on “Why and How I Wrote My Academic Book in Plain Text”Submitted Semantic Linefeeds (2012) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttp://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
Comment linking /brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/
on “Why and How I Wrote My Academic Book in Plain Text”Submitted The Clean Architecture in Python (2014) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere are my favorites: - Jacob Kaplan-Moss ( https://jacobian.org/ ) [Engineering leadership, OSS] - Anton Zhiyanov ( https://antonz.org/ ) [SQL, Go, Python] - Julia Evans ( https://jvns.ca/ ) [SQL, Linux, Python, Go, Web] - Brandur Leach ( https://brandur.org/ ) [Postgres, Go, Ruby, Web] - Brandon Rhodes ( https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/ ) [Python, Astronomy, Linux] - Nathanial J Smith ( https://vorpus.org/blog/ )…
Comment linking /brandon/
on “Ask HN: Favorite blog in 2024?”Submitted When Python Practices Go Wrong as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAhem. Let me be the first to say, YUCK!!! I don't understand why people like this language. I am sure it has it's uses etc., but come on, if you want to build a reliable, easy-to-reason program, using JS is just running up a escalator that is going down. https://abdulapopoola.com/2015/09/30/why-javascript-seems-to... http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/js/ http://dorey.github.io/JavaScript-Equality-Table/ https://www…
Comment linking /brandon/2012/js/
on “JavaScript Conquered the Web, Now It’s Taking Over the Desktop”Submitted PyEphem: Basic Astronomical Computations for Python as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe default layout for the twiddler is pretty awful. If anyone wants to try one of these, check out the TabSpace layout. https://github.com/cswetenham/tabspace2.1 http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/projects/tabspace-guide.pdf It's much better. If anyone's interested, there's a typing tutor for it and I have files to modify it for use with TabSpace (I'd have to find them though) http://wearables.cc.gatech.edu/projects/twi…
Comment linking /brandon/projects/tabspace-guide.pdf
on “How to create a handheld Linux terminal”Submitted PyEphem - Scientific-grade astronomical computations in Python as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
