Top all-time · #1668
Jesse Farmer
Personal blog · 20bits.com · on HN as jfarmerdataprogrammingstartups
Jesse Farmer writes Recent Articles at 20bits, a personal blog at 20bits.com about data, programming and startups. Since 2007, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 96 times, most often “Programmer Interview Questions: Two Bowling Balls”. The last post was in 2012, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jesse Farmer's 20bits blog for programming interview puzzles and math explainers, such as the two bowling balls problem and A/B test statistics, plus Erlang and graph theory articles.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter calls the two-bowling-balls puzzle post an interesting supplemental reading; another points readers to it for the A/B testing math.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Programmer Interview Questions: Two Bowling Balls4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-11-21
- Almost Viral: A Hybrid Acquisition Strategy3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-15
- A Reflection: 6 Years In the Valley3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-04-03
- The State of the Facebook Platform3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-05-06
- Why iPhone Apps Are Too Cheap2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-12-10
- Three Myths of Viral Growth2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-11-18
- The Cult of the Product2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-12-02
- Statistical Analysis and A/B Testing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-11-12
- Powerset Launches. Verdict: Meh.2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-05-12
- Tips for Crafting Metrics That Matter2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-05-12
What Hacker News says?
First thing on duckduckgo when you search for how to write a server in erlang: http://20bits.com/article/erlang-a-generic-server-tutorial That's just ridiculous. Erlang looks like php and python had an unholy child.
Comment linking /article/erlang-a-generic-server-tutorial
on “Program your next server in Go”Submitted Erlang: A Generalized TCP Server as a story · 119 points
HN discussionEverlane FULL TIME San Francisco, CA Hey HN! I'm Jesse, one of the co-founders of Everlane, and we're hiring engineers. Check out our website at http://www.everlane.com , and my personal blog at http://20bits.com We're trying to re-imagine retail online and make it easy to find products that match your taste and style. Right now we're focused on mens fashion, but our ambitions are much larger. We're gearing up for o…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (June 2011)”Submitted Erlang: An Introduction to Records as a story · 92 points
HN discussionEverlane FULL TIME San Francisco, CA Hey HN! I'm Jesse, one of the co-founders of Everlane, and we're hiring engineers. Check out our website at http://www.everlane.com , and my personal blog at http://20bits.com We're trying to re-imagine retail online and make it easy to find products that match your taste and style. Right now we're focused on mens fashion, but our ambitions are much larger. pg did a good job of e…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (May 2011)”Submitted Learning Erlang as a story · 65 points
HN discussionEverlane - San Francisco, CA (FULLTIME, H1B, INTERNS) Hey HN! This is Jesse, one of the co-founders of Everlane. Check out our website at http://www.everlane.com , and my personal blog at http://20bits.com We're trying to re-imagine retail online and make it easy to find products that match your taste and style. Right now we're focused on mens fashion, but our ambitions are much larger. pg did a good job of explaini…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (April 2011)”Submitted Graph Theory: Part III (Facebook) as a story · 56 points
HN discussionSan Francisco, CA Hi HN! I'm Jesse, one of the founders of Everlane. http://www.everlane.com We're trying to re-imagine retail online and make it easy to find products that match your taste and style. Right now we're focused on mens fashion, but our ambitions are much larger. pg did a good job of explaining the opportunity, here: http://ycombinator.com/rfs2.html We're building a members-only club where each month we…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (August 2011)”Submitted Powerset Launches. Verdict: Meh. as a story · 45 points
HN discussionAn interesting supplemental reading is the "two bowling balls" interview puzzle -- http://20bits.com/articles/interview-questions-two-bowling-b... It's essentially a 2 level skip list (but could be generalized where you get one extra level per bowling ball), and brings out some basic calculus to optimize lookup performance even further.
Comment linking /articles/interview-questions-two-bowling-balls/
on “Skip Lists are Fascinating”Submitted Notification Strategies for Social Networks (w/ math) as a story · 36 points
HN discussionA point to add to the discussion from the metrics perspective: the net promoter score. Net promoter score is an easy tool you can use to determine trends in your users' experience. It can be used as a leading indicator of the 'N' part of your viral coefficient. eries goes in to detail in "Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction" ( http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/net…
Comment linking /articles/three-myths-of-viral-growth/
on “How to make your application viral - A guide to getting users”Submitted Copyright Infringement != Theft as a story · 30 points
HN discussionA referral effectively reduces the cost of acquisition, and you can calculate the extent to which it does that. http://20bits.com/articles/almost-viral-a-hybrid-acquisition...
Comment linking /articles/almost-viral-a-hybrid-acquisition-strategy/
on “Dropbox (YC S07) Raises $7.25M, Crosses 3M Users”Submitted Keith Olbermann Thinks I'm an Idiot as a story · 29 points
HN discussionAlthough in the image, nowhere could I see p value, I have verified it by myself that there is 95% significance. And I agree with you it depends on perspective on what you consider significance. BTW, those wanting to know the math head to http://20bits.com/articles/statistical-analysis-and-ab-testi...
Comment linking /articles/statistical-analysis-and-ab-testing/
on “Shopping Cart Redesign Boosted Software Sales 94% in A/B Test”Submitted The Cult of the Product as a story · 28 points
HN discussionThese are all the Erlang-related articles I wrote: http://20bits.com/tag/erlang/
Comment linking /tag/erlang/
on “Learning Erlang”Submitted Introduction to Dynamic Programming as a story · 28 points
HN discussionIt does, but the link is broken. You can find it here... http://20bits.com/articles/network-programming-in-erlang/
Comment linking /articles/network-programming-in-erlang/
on “Learning Erlang”Submitted 10 tips for optimizing mysql queries as a story · 25 points
HN discussionMy personal website is powered by Padrino ( http://20bits.com ), having hosted it on Wordpress for the 6 years prior. I liked Padrino but the codebase was kind of a mess. I could tell that overall it was very immature. What progress has been made on that front in the last year?
Comment linking /
on “Padrino 0.11.3 Released”Submitted Tips for Crafting Metrics That Matter as a story · 24 points
HN discussionHis direct links from part 3 to parts 1 and 2 are broken. However if you click on "More Articles" ( http://20bits.com/category/articles/ ) on his homepage the links there work fine. http://20bits.com/articles/graph-theory-part-i-introduction/ http://20bits.com/articles/graph-theory-part-ii-linear-algeb...
Comment linking /articles/graph-theory-part-ii-linear-algebra/
on “Graph Theory: Part III (Facebook)”Submitted Behavior Adoption on Social Networks: Two Models of Viral Growth as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI'm going to toot my own horn, here. Almost three years ago to the day I wrote an article outlining what Digg should do in light of the launch of the Facebook Platform: 1. Digg should become the default way people like and share things on the web and, in particular, Facebook. 2. Digg should reflect shared content through the social graph, vs. showing me an aggregate view of all activity in the world. The former is s…
Comment linking /articles/5-ways-to-improve-the-digg-app/
on “Exclusive Video And Screenshots Of Digg Version 4”Submitted 10 tips for optimizing mySql queries as a story · 14 points
HN discussionI wrote a few Erlang tutorials was I was learning: http://20bits.com/tag/erlang/ The public documentation for the language is awful.
Comment linking /tag/erlang/
on “Ask HN: Learning Erlang from scratch”Submitted Social Applications are Social Networks as a story · 13 points
HN discussion
