Top all-time · #2593
Nicholas C. Zakas
Personal blog · humanwhocodes.comprogrammingweb
Nicholas C. Zakas writes Human Who Codes, a personal blog at humanwhocodes.com about programming and web. Since 2018, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 41 times, most often “The care and feeding of software engineers, or why engineers are grumpy (2012)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-30, and you can follow it by feed.
The Official Web Site of Nicholas C. Zakas
Most-linked posts?
- The care and feeding of software engineers, or why engineers are grumpy (2012)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-08-02
- Fsx: A modern filesystem API for JavaScript4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-01-11
- Why I've stopped exporting defaults from my JavaScript modules3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-01-18
- JavaScript WTF: Why does every() return true for empty arrays? – Human Who Codes3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-11
- Env: a better way to read environment variables in JavaScript2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-16
- /blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme-disease/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-10-31
- The five questions I used to help me decide, prioritize, and solve problems2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-02-18
What Hacker News says?
LOL. I just want to try out vibe coding on something small with a persona based appoarch described here: https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2025/06/persona-based-approac...
Comment linking /blog/2025/06/persona-based-approach-ai-assisted-programming/
on “Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context”Submitted My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer as a story · 726 points
HN discussionHe remarks here ( https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme-diseas... ) that his health has been poor for the last (now) 19 years. Having contracted Lyme roughly 9 years ago myself, I can empathize with him. The effects never truly go away.
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme-disease/
on “My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer”Submitted The care and feeding of software engineers, or why engineers are grumpy (2012) as a story · 308 points
HN discussionShout-out to Nicholas Zachas (@slicknet, https://humanwhocodes.com ). Thanks for the great JavaScript books, and praying you feel better!
Comment linking /
on “Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding”Submitted Env: a better way to read environment variables in JavaScript as a story · 13 points
HN discussionHere's two really good articles, not books, on the subject: * https://www.hashtagcoder.dev/blog/director-of-engineering * https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2012/06/12/the-care-and-feedi...
Comment linking /blog/2012/06/12/the-care-and-feeding-of-software-engineers-or-why-engineers-are-grumpy/
on “Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?”Submitted Sponsoring dependencies: The next step in open source sustainability as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThese APIs didn’t all come out the same time, so they weren’t designed to differ. Instead they decided against doing live node lists in future but couldn’t change how the older methods work as that would break websites. In the world of DOM/JS you can’t really make breaking changes. https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2010/09/28/why-is-getelements... Has more context
Comment linking /blog/2010/09/28/why-is-getelementsbytagname-faster-that-queryselectorall/
on “GetElementById vs. QuerySelector”Submitted Fsx: A modern filesystem API for JavaScript as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> 1) Make it their time 2) Mentor the whole person 3) Don’t give answers, provide strategies 4) Give homework 5) Don’t prevent all mistakes, just horrible ones 6) Don’t try to create a you-clone https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2014/01/07/how-to-be-a-mentor...
Comment linking /blog/2014/01/07/how-to-be-a-mentor/
on “Ask HN: How to Guide a Junior Developer?”Submitted What's the difference between JavaScript engines and JavaScript runtimes? as a story · 3 points
HN discussion"By analogy: right now, you can tell your browser to change its User-Agent string to anything you want." You can also not send this header. By default I do not send it. The RFCs do not require it^1 and very rarely do I find sites that do. When I do find such sites,^2 I just add them to the proxy config so that a UA is added on the way out. Almost invariably these sites will accept a made-up UA, so long as it is well…
Comment linking /blog/2010/01/12/history-of-the-user-agent-string/
on “The Right to Lie and Google’s “Web Environment Integrity””Submitted How to talk to your company about sponsoring an open source project as a story · 3 points
HN discussioneval( <javascript> ) is terrible at ensuring security. Query programs are executed against the same environment as your own programs! ask { <askscript> } runs on AskVM which is a separate execution context that you define yourself with the exact set of resources, values and limits the each incoming program needs. AskVM is currently implemented in JavaScript. We plan to port it to Python, C and AskScript very soon. C…
Comment linking /blog/2010/10/26/wanted-dynamic-execution-contexts-in-javascript/
on “The missing query and programming language”Submitted The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou reminded me the case of Nicholas Zakas [1]. Please read it carefully and make an appointment to your personal doctor to check you for lyme disease; it matches your case since you have mentioned the number of years you are dealing with this chronic issue. https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme-diseas...
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme-disease/
on “Dealing with Chronic Fatigue”Submitted The five questions I used to help me decide, prioritize, and solve problems as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mentoss: The Fetch Mocker as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Someone temporarily took over my subdomain as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fsx: A modern filesystem API for JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fsx: A modern filesystem API for JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted fsx: A Modern Filesystem API for JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Private instance members with weakmaps in JavaScript (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Creating a JavaScript promise from scratch, Part 1: Constructor as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted GitHub Copilot's Pricing Gamble as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Coder to Orchestrator: The future of software engineering with AI as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How GitHub Could Secure NPM as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
