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Colin Woodbury

Personal blog · fosskers.ca/en/blogprogrammingsystems

Colin Woodbury writes Fosskers.ca Blog, a personal blog at fosskers.ca about programming and systems. Since 2020, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “A Tour of the Lisps”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-30, and you can follow it by feed.

Visit the blog
18mentions?
0recommend?
9HN people?
2020–2025first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 7 in 2024

Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?

Why HN links it

HN readers link his posts on programming languages and ecosystems, and on optimizing Common Lisp, including a follow-up on how ECL performance changes between optimization levels.

Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.

Most-linked posts?

  1. A Tour of the Lisps
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-29

What Hacker News says?

  1. colingw · 2024-01-29
    Yes, it's more than just about the language itself, as I describe here: https://www.fosskers.ca/en/blog/software-dev-langs For some people, community signals are very important. Massive conferences or raw number of libraries, etc., indicate some inner quality of that language's ecosystem that they value.

    Comment linking /en/blog/software-dev-langs

    on “A Tour of the Lisps”
  2. medo-bear · 2024-01-29

    Submitted A Tour of the Lisps as a story · 358 points

    HN discussion
  3. colingw · 2025-05-08
    Thanks for the tip. I double-checked, and while there is no difference between 0 and 1 for SBCL and ABCL, there is a slowdown for ECL. I've elaborated here: https://www.fosskers.ca/en/blog/optimizing-common-lisp#orgb5...

    Comment linking /en/blog/optimizing-common-lisp

    on “Optimizing Common Lisp”
  4. todsacerdoti · 2025-08-31

    Submitted Quirks of Common Lisp Types as a story · 121 points

    HN discussion
  5. colingw · 2021-03-10

    Submitted Guide: Full Wayland Setup for Linux as a story · 112 points

    HN discussion
  6. colingw · 2022-01-31

    Submitted Software Development Languages: Haskell as a story · 96 points

    HN discussion
  7. todsacerdoti · 2025-06-27

    Submitted Cross-Compiling Common Lisp for Windows as a story · 71 points

    HN discussion
  8. todsacerdoti · 2025-05-07

    Submitted Optimizing Common Lisp as a story · 52 points

    HN discussion
  9. 2-3-7-43-1807 · 2024-08-25

    Submitted Aaron Swartz: How I Hire Programmers (2009) as a story · 6 points

    HN discussion
  10. todsacerdoti · 2021-08-17

    Submitted Contributing to Emacs as a story · 5 points

    HN discussion
  11. geospeck · 2024-01-29

    Submitted A Tour of the Lisps as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  12. OJFord · 2021-07-30

    Submitted The herb combination chart as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  13. colingw · 2020-07-29

    Submitted 'Software Development Languages' vs. 'Programming Languages' as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  14. nemoniac · 2024-03-07

    Submitted Proven Complexity and Technology Choice as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  15. lioeters · 2024-01-30

    Submitted Subsetting Your Life as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  16. dxs · 2024-01-30

    Submitted How Software Companies Die (2023) as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  17. todsacerdoti · 2021-12-22

    Submitted Arc Borrowing Patterns as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  18. colingw · 2020-08-12

    Submitted Software Development Languages (Part 2): Rust as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion

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