Top all-time · #1535
Chad Fowler
Personal blog · chadfowler.comprogrammingcareer
Chad Fowler's personal blog at chadfowler.com covers programming and career. Since 2007, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 79 times, most often “Rails Development No-Nos”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Chad Fowler's posts on immutable deployments, the big rewrite, software as spec, monkey patching, and MagLev with Ruby. Some commenters also link his posts on strace and on learning to program.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Described as an interesting blog post on procrastination, written in 2003.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Chad Fowler is an internationally recognized software developer, author, venture capitalist, and avant-garde jazz musician. Partner & CTO at BlueYard Capital, founder of Mahakala Music, author of The Passionate Programmer.
Most-linked posts?
- Rails Development No-Nos3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-09
- Your Most Important Skill: Empathy3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-01-19
- Immutable Infrastructure and Disposable Components3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-06-25
- The Magic of strace2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-01-31
- Be careful of who you work with2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-24
- The art/craft/commodity continuum2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-12-27
- /2008/6/5/maglev2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-06-05
- Writing APIs to Wrap APIs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-02-03
- Dead End Jobs: Are You Suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-30
- Killing the Crunch Mode Antipattern2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-23
What Hacker News says?
I did a post on that here: https://simplesecurity.sensedeep.com/immutable-infrastructur... but the originator was: Chad Fowler http://chadfowler.com/2013/06/23/immutable-deployments.html
Comment linking /2013/06/23/immutable-deployments.html
on “Web Developer Security Checklist”Submitted The Magic of strace as a story · 531 points
HN discussionBending to the will of the people, I have appended a conclusion, clarifying the fate of the Lotus Domino server. http://chadfowler.com/blog/2014/01/26/the-magic-of-strace/
Comment linking /blog/2014/01/26/the-magic-of-strace/
on “The Magic of strace”Submitted Your Most Important Skill: Empathy as a story · 330 points
HN discussionIt was a pretty interesting company: http://chadfowler.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderlist
Comment linking /
on “Microsoft to shut down Wunderlist in favor of its new app, To-Do”Submitted Dead End Jobs: Are You Suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? as a story · 248 points
HN discussionIt sounds like you may not be "dumb", but maybe just a beginner who is struggling to get to the next level. Here are a few questions I'd ask first before you decide programming is not for you. 1. Do you work with other experienced and passionate programmers who can mentor you?( http://chadfowler.com/2011/02/24/be-careful-of-who-you-work-... ) 2. Do you know how to learn? A lot of people assume it just comes down to…
Comment linking /2011/02/24/be-careful-of-who-you-work-with
on “I'm a cargo cult programmer, help me”Submitted Your most important skill: Empathy as a story · 203 points
HN discussionthrow away account... I work at a small hedge fund in London, started on £28k (actually might have been less, I literally can't remember now), after 4 years I am up to £40k, with around £5k bonus each year. I have basically been doing CRUD of various flavours the whole time under a bullying atmosphere, utterly soul-destroying and it's got me stuck in the Stockholm syndrome scenario, my skills ground down to the poin…
Comment linking /2010/12/30/dead-end-jobs-are-you-suffering-from-stockholm-syndrome
on “Silicon Milkroundabout: Forget the banks, come and join a London startup”Submitted Killing the Crunch Mode Antipattern as a story · 158 points
HN discussionAllan was saying "the end is in sight" 6 months ago. http://blog.macromates.com/2009/working-on-it/ This really reminds me of a series of blog posts by Chad Fowler, warning against the "big rewrite." http://chadfowler.com/2006/12/27/the-big-rewrite Now he says the next version will be out "maybe in 6 more months if everything goes right." In other words: "I have absolutely no idea when or if I'm ever going to finish…
Comment linking /2006/12/27/the-big-rewrite
on “Why Textmate 2.0 is not Developed in the Open”Submitted How Rails Developers do Ajax in 2011 as a story · 118 points
HN discussion> Docker on the other hand is not just a third-party library in your project. Docker is a container What's the difference, exactly? In either case, a failure in the code composing the third-party component can, at worst, cause an instance of your application to crash and corrupt state, preventing instances on that machine from coming back up. But as long as you've got immutable deployments[1] set up, when all else f…
Comment linking /blog/2013/06/23/immutable-deployments/
on “Using Docker with Github and Jenkins for repeatable deployments”Submitted Killing the Crunch Mode Antipattern (2014) as a story · 108 points
HN discussionJust because it's a satire doesn't mean the title in incorrect. I would argue that Ruby is, in fact, the future for the same reason that Python is the future. As for monkey patching, yes, it's ill-advised in general just as global scope and gotos are ill-advised for similar reasons. However, monkey patching is a powerful feature if used responsibly as Chad Fowler has noted ("The Virtues of Monkey Patching"): http://…
Comment linking /index.cgi/Computing/Programming/Ruby/TheVirtuesOfMonkeyPatching.rdoc,v
on “Ruby Is The Future”Submitted How Learning a Second Language Changed My Life as a story · 107 points
HN discussionActually one of the most interesting things at RailsConf was MagLev, which applies the GemStone object persistence engine to Ruby. Apparently there are some pretty big Smalltalk apps out there using GemStone. http://chadfowler.com/2008/6/5/maglev and http://ruby.gemstone.com/
Comment linking /2008/6/5/maglev
on “Database heresies (The "right" and "wrong" way to do ORM)”Submitted Be careful of who you work with as a story · 100 points
HN discussionhttp://www.avibryant.com/2008/06/maglev-recap.html http://chadfowler.com/2008/6/5/maglev
Comment linking /2008/6/5/maglev
on “MagLev handles trees like a monkey”Submitted Immutable Infrastructure and Disposable Components as a story · 93 points
HN discussionTreating the old application as the spec for the new one is usually not a good idea. Define the problem(s) the new application is trying to solve instead of trying to copy the behavior of the old application. This is important for both developers and users. ( http://www.chadfowler.com/2006/12/28/software-as-spec ) I like tackling the tougher parts first as assumptions usually conflict with the real world and the des…
Comment linking /2006/12/28/software-as-spec
on “Ask YC: The way hackers plan software”Submitted How to Give a Keynote as a story · 62 points
HN discussionChad Fowler wrote an interesting blog post roughly about this topic in 2003: http://chadfowler.com/2003/02/06/attention-span-challenged - Working like this also works for me (at least most of the time ;) ).
Comment linking /2003/02/06/attention-span-challenged
on “Ask HN: Do you cross procrastinate?”Submitted Switching to Android as a story · 59 points
HN discussionSubmitted How To Get Your Conference Talk Accepted as a story · 46 points
HN discussionSubmitted On Being 40 as a story · 37 points
HN discussionSubmitted What would you rather be doing? as a story · 29 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Eight Hour Burn (2013) as a story · 24 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't Put All Your Eggs in Someone Else's Basket as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted Re-thinking Software Development Education as a story · 18 points
HN discussion
