Top all-time · #291
Brendan Eich
Personal blog · brendaneich.comprogrammingweb
Brendan Eich's personal blog at brendaneich.com covers programming and web. Since 2010, 173 different Hacker News readers have linked it 235 times, most often “Inclusiveness at Mozilla”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Brendan Eich's blog for his 2014 Mozilla inclusiveness statement and resignation, and for JavaScript and WebAssembly history such as TraceMonkey, Scheme and asm.js. Few praise the writing itself.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One calls a post 'a nice article'; another suggests examining the 'trust but verify' piece on reproducible builds.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- Inclusiveness at Mozilla30 people · 35 mentions · first linked 2014-03-26
- JavaScript was Scheme and Smalltalk !?!19 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2013-07-19
- /2012/04/community-and-diversity/13 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2014-03-24
- The Next Mission10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2014-04-03
- From Asm.js to WebAssembly10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2015-06-17
- Trust but Verify6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2014-01-11
- The Bridge of Khazad DRM6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-10-23
- Harmony Of My Dreams 5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-01-19
- The infernal semicolon (2012)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-08-01
- Harmony of Dreams Come True 5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-10-09
What Hacker News says?
The witch hunt against Brendan was just terrible. He made a minor donation years ago and it's something people blew out of proportion. Here was his statement about inclusiveness after his donation became an issue https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ To me it looks like he was committed to keeping Mozilla inclusive and would have been a great CEO.
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Tim Cook Speaks Up”Submitted From Asm.js to WebAssembly as a story · 897 points
HN discussionWe are so far from cornering the market or even taking Chrome’s share that this seems like misdirection. Anyway, of course a monopoly or big enough company can go wrong, but Brave is built on ideas from https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ and if future Brave ever went bad, I’d join many others in taking it down. It helps greatly, beyond the properties discussed in that blog post, that we don’t track, s…
Comment linking /2014/01/trust-but-verify/
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted Brendan Eich becomes Mozilla CEO as a story · 396 points
HN discussionLGBT people don't campaign to ban heterosexual marriage. Even Eich acknowledges he hurt people.[1] He just thought they should trust him anyway. [1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up”Submitted Cisco to release BSD-licensed H.264 stack as a story · 327 points
HN discussionEich acknowledged he hurt people.[1] He didn't just hold a view. 52% of Californian voters didn't ask Mozilla employees to trust them with their livelihoods and the culture of the company. A lot of them changed their minds by 2014 too. [1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up”Submitted Why Mozilla Matters as a story · 307 points
HN discussionEich wouldn't say he wouldn't do it again. He said he was doing a great job as CEO after days on the job.[1] He expressed "sorrow at having caused pain" not regret or apology. He said he wanted to be held accountable but not how.[2] I can understand how it was too little too late for some people. [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm... [2] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-…
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up”Submitted Brendan Eich: The infernal semicolon as a story · 256 points
HN discussion> Mr. Eich once gave $1K to a cause that was anti-gay. And $2.1K to a prop 8 supporter [0] > He backtracked and apologized but was cancelled anyways. This is lie and you are re-writing history. I can find no such statement from him. In fact all he said was he wanted to "express my sorrow at having caused pain" [1], the classic "I'm sorry your were offended by that" non-apology. He has never stated that his support o…
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up”Submitted Today I saw the future as a story · 224 points
HN discussionI don't see any mentions of reproducible builds over there. If you're not familiar what reproducible builds are, I suggest you examine the following article: * https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ Mozilla, however, is different, in that all builds are posted to ftp.mozilla.org, in a versioned manner, and kept there for a while, which, at least in theory, makes it easier to verify or analyse the builds.…
Comment linking /2014/01/trust-but-verify/
on “What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time?”Submitted Trust but Verify as a story · 157 points
HN discussionNot only that, but he has another account, @BraveSampson, which links to this one, @jonathansampson, but not the other way around. They used to have a nearly-identical pictures, and, IIRC, linked to each other, but not anymore. Would I be the only one to find it fishy for someone to post such reviews for your competitors whilst pretending that you're an individual not on a payroll from Brave? Why should Mozilla prox…
Comment linking /2014/01/trust-but-verify/);
on “What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time?”Submitted Brendan Eich on Ecma TC39, JavaScript.next, and Google Dash as a story · 138 points
HN discussionIt's also mentioned on his blog, or at least the statement "I’ve resigned as CEO and I’m leaving Mozilla to take a rest..." [1]. Doesn't explicitly say he's never coming back, but certainly says he's leaving Mozilla for a time. [1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/
Comment linking /2014/04/the-next-mission/
on “Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO”Submitted Inclusiveness at Mozilla as a story · 137 points
HN discussionI'll grant you I was misinformed on the latter, but can you point to some source on him not working for Mozilla at all anymore? Nothing I can see says anything but that he stepped down from the CEO role and his board position on the Foundation (which would be where he could still have a say in the running of Mozilla, I don't think it was the goal of the boycott to have him leave the Foundation board so it seems a li…
Comment linking /2014/04/the-next-mission/
on “Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO”Submitted The Next Mission as a story · 102 points
HN discussion> "I understand how my activities can be seen as divisive and wrong and inconsistent with my commitment to upholding the diverse values underpinning the Mozilla community and I apologize for my behaviour at the time. I will do everything in my power to make up for it and I hope the community can judge me based me on my record from this point onwards". This is close enough to what he actually said: https://brendaneic…
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO”Submitted Memories of Mozilla at 15 and Thoughts on Mozilla Research as a story · 101 points
HN discussionEich's late March '14 comment, for reference: https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO”Submitted Brendan Eich: New JavaScript Engine Module Owner as a story · 85 points
HN discussion"""All he had to do was lie and say "I understand how my activities can be seen as divisive and wrong and inconsistent with my commitment to upholding the diverse values underpinning the Mozilla community and I apologize for my behaviour at the time. I will do everything in my power to make up for it and I hope the community can judge me based me on my record from this point onwards".""" He did say that. https://bre…
Comment linking /2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/
on “Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO”Submitted The infernal semicolon (2012) as a story · 62 points
HN discussion23 Aug 2008: https://brendaneich.com/2008/08/tracemonkey-javascript-light... 01 Sep 2008: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser... TraceMonkey was in the works since late Spring 2008. Apple was also doing more advanced JS performance work before Chrome launched. V8 had the world-class VM team and at least two years lead (Lars Bak went to Google in 2004; I met him in August 2006 when he was def…
Comment linking /2008/08/tracemonkey-javascript-lightspeed/
on “Why I'm switching back to Firefox”Submitted Harmony Of My Dreams as a story · 40 points
HN discussionI guess you're right that TraceMonkey was announced before Chrome was released on 2007-09-02, one day after its inadvertent public announcement. TraceMonkey was announced, though incomplete, more than a week earlier, 2008-08-23: https://brendaneich.com/2008/08/tracemonkey-javascript-light... . SFX, however, was announced later, 2008-09-18. I don't want to piss too much on SunSpider, but unsurprisingly V8 did better…
Comment linking /2008/08/tracemonkey-javascript-lightspeed/
on “Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? (2010)”Submitted Brendan Eich's JSConf Talk / Participate in the Future of JavaScript as a story · 33 points
HN discussion
