Top all-time · #2241
Call Me Fishmeal.
Personal blog · blog.wilshipley.comprogrammingculture
Call Me Fishmeal. is a personal blog at blog.wilshipley.com about programming and culture. Since 2010, 33 different Hacker News readers have linked it 42 times, most often “Celebrating Betrand Serlet and Craig Federighi”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Wil Shipley's blog for essays on startups and app-store economics, personal writing on craziness and mental health, and Cocoa programming lessons such as the Pimp my Code series.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Called a compelling and insightful writer, one who nails the problem in places, and whose posts are an interesting, fun, and well worth reading.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I write software. I'm obsessive-compulsive. I like good stuff. Kittens are fuzzy.
Most-linked posts?
- Celebrating Betrand Serlet and Craig Federighi4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-03-23
- Success, and Farming vs. Mining4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-04-02
- Wil Shipley: My “Doom” 20th Anniversary Stories4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-12-15
- The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-03-27
- Swift and Dynamism2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-05-27
- In Semi-Defense of Twitter2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-16
- Replacing Loops in Swift2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-08-05
- Wil Shipley: The Founding of The Omni Group2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-09
What Hacker News says?
http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mi...
Comment linking /2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mining.html
on “Don't Be A Free User”Submitted Success, and Farming vs. Mining as a story · 271 points
HN discussionSteve Yegge http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ Wil Shipley https://blog.wilshipley.com/ Yossi Kreinin http://yosefk.com/ All three brilliant, with good sense of humor and having good "vision thing"
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?”Submitted The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades as a story · 232 points
HN discussionCounterpoint (old but relevant): http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mi... The article paints non-startup guys as parasites. That's so needlessly polarizing. The more common definition of the Passive Income Hacker is "lifestyle business", i.e. a business where you don't seek a 10-100x exit. Personally I think if all you've done or plan on doing is an app or website, calling it a startup is kind…
Comment linking /2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mining.html
on “Passive Income Hacker vs Startup Guy”Submitted Wil Shipley: My “Doom” 20th Anniversary Stories as a story · 198 points
HN discussionThis won't help one bit. Seriously: Why do developers like those from Sketch drop the Mac App Store? Here's why: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/01/another-popular-app-leaves... http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-... https://www.dancounsell.com/a-wish-list-for-the-mac-app-stor... https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/developers-keep-leaving-mac-ap...
Comment linking /2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-upgrades.html
on “Apple Plans Combined iPhone, iPad and Mac Apps to Create One User Experience”Submitted Swift and Dynamism as a story · 86 points
HN discussionMy guess is that he's talking about this problem: http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mi... "Founders and angel investors usually don’t particularly care if the companies they created live or die after they sell out, because they’ve gotten their money and moved on. There’s no stigma to having a company you founded fail after you leave it. In fact, again, it's a badge of honor: “Bob Smith founde…
Comment linking /2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mining.html
on “Steve Jobs' memo to startups”Submitted How Doom got ported to NeXTSTEP (2013) as a story · 77 points
HN discussionWil Shipley has always been my programming hero, growing up. I spent a lot of time reading his Pimp my Code series, and learned quite a few things about Cocoa from him. Not only is he a great coder, he's also an incredibly compelling writer and speaker. http://blog.wilshipley.com/2005/07/self-stupid-init.html
Comment linking /2005/07/self-stupid-init.html
on “Wil Shipley: My “Doom” 20th Anniversary Stories”Submitted Real Security in Mac OS X Requires Apple-Signed Certificates as a story · 76 points
HN discussionMaybe Wil Shipley nailed the problem in his "On Being Crazy": http://blog.wilshipley.com/2005/05/on-being-crazy.html So, is genius linked with craziness? Is this why we aren't all geniuses? Is mankind only so smart because if we get any smarter, we cease to function correctly? Maybe it's just not evolutionarily advantageous to be smarter than we are; it makes us mopey, and we end up cutting our ears off when we're t…
Comment linking /2005/05/on-being-crazy.html
on “Should we talk about the fact that founder Jody Sherman didn't just die?”Submitted Replacing Loops in Swift as a story · 45 points
HN discussionWil Shipley had a pretty good write up of Craig's Apple history, going back to meeting him at NeXT. Obviously it's just Wil's opinions, but an interesting read nonetheless. http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/03/celebrating-betrand-serle...
Comment linking /2011/03/celebrating-betrand-serlet-and-craig.html
on “Interview: Apple’s Craig Federighi about Face ID”Submitted Celebrating Betrand Serlet and Craig Federighi as a story · 26 points
HN discussionhttp://blog.wilshipley.com/2005/05/on-being-crazy.html is a very insightful read on that subject, from a successful but unstable person. Is mankind only so smart because if we get any smarter, we cease to function correctly? Maybe it's just not evolutionarily advantageous to be smarter than we are; it makes us mopey, and we end up cutting our ears off when we're trying to woo girls, which rarely results in offspring.
Comment linking /2005/05/on-being-crazy.html
on “The psychiatric drug crisis”Submitted In Semi-Defense of Twitter as a story · 15 points
HN discussionI'd recommend checking out this post[1] by Wil Shipley (a longtime Cocoa dev), which includes a story about how Carmack doesn't re-use code. The whole blog post is a fun read. [1] http://blog.wilshipley.com/2013/12/my-doom-20th-anniversary-...
Comment linking /2013/12/my-doom-20th-anniversary-stories.html
on “Programming principles from the early days of id Software”Submitted Adobe & Microsoft, sitting in a Tree. as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI think it might be because, as Wil Shipley pointed out http://blog.wilshipley.com/2007/12/on-saying-goodbye.html (some) smart people tend to be miserable because their wits let them skip the mechanisms put in place in human mind to prevent it from feeling miserable despite actually being so. Also http://blog.wilshipley.com/2007/03/crazy-talk.html
Comment linking /2007/03/crazy-talk.html
on “High IQ linked to drug use”Submitted “Curated” Doesn’t Necessarily Mean “Secure” as a story · 9 points
HN discussionWil Shipley (longtime NeXT and Mac OS X programmer) posted a few thoughts on Serlet and his replacement Federighi. Well worth a read, he clearly has enormous respect for both of them. http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/03/celebrating-betrand-serle...
Comment linking /2011/03/celebrating-betrand-serlet-and-craig.html
on “Bertrand Serlet to leave Apple”Submitted Why I hate New Vegas (Wil Shipley) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionDisagree wholeheartedly. Read this post to see why: http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-...
Comment linking /2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-upgrades.html
on “IOS 6: Higher Hanging Fruit”Submitted Replacing Loops in Swift as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYou are misrepresenting his argument about frameworks. Re-read the first paragraph of his post: "Apple's shared frameworks are very useful for sharing executable code and its associated resources among multiple applications, but were historically not designed to be created by authors of consumer applications. I discourage developers from creating frameworks as a method of sharing code, because they encourage code bl…
Comment linking /2005/11/frameworks-are-teh-suck-err.html
on “Swift and Dynamism”Submitted Wil Shipley's Q&A with TSA Chairman John Pistole as a story · 5 points
HN discussionWil Shipley has explored this approach: http://blog.wilshipley.com/2009/08/pimp-my-code-part-16-heur... I also swear I remember reading another example of this on his blog, but I'm unable to find it, so I'll paraphrase from memory (which is somewhat murky, so caveat lector): One of the features of Delicious Library is that you can use your computer's built-in webcam to scan barcodes as a way of adding items to your…
Comment linking /2009/08/pimp-my-code-part-16-heuristics-and.html
on “The Biology of Sloppy Code”Submitted Wil Shipley: The Founding of The Omni Group as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
