Top all-time · #618
Joseph Gentle
Personal blog · josephg.com · on HN as josephgprogrammingsystemsdata
Joseph Gentle writes Seph, a personal blog at josephg.com about programming, systems and data. Since 2013, 100 different Hacker News readers have linked it 132 times, most often “Three Tribes of Programming (2017)”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link josephg.com for CRDT and collaborative-editing posts, arguments against Electron for desktop apps, and the three tribes of programming.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called a good CRDT performance article and a nice CRDT optimization story; recommended to CRDT newcomers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Three Tribes of Programming (2017)26 people · 28 mentions · first linked 2017-05-03
- Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)15 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2016-11-06
- CRDTs are the future15 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2020-09-28
- Faster CRDTs: An Adventure in Optimization12 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2021-07-31
- War over Being Nice6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-02-13
- Home is where the bits flow4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-09-28
- Need for a standard Protocol for handling Change Feeds4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-05-25
- Electron is flash for the Desktop3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-04-11
- 3 tribes of programming2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-05-04
- Rewriting Rust2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-09-26
What Hacker News says?
OT? I read a post about CRDTs being more useful https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/
Comment linking /blog/crdts-are-the-future/
on “My experience as a Gazan girl getting into Silicon Valley companies”Submitted Electron is flash for the desktop (2016) as a story · 1519 points
HN discussionReminds me of the three tribes of software programmers. https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/amp/ Mort == maker Elvis ==? hacker Einstein == poet
Comment linking /blog/3-tribes/amp/
on “Cognitive load is what matters”Submitted CRDTs are the future as a story · 1181 points
HN discussionThere's a post about the three tribes of programming. https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ Tribe 1: You are a poet and a mathematician. Programming is your poetry Tribe 2: You are a hacker. You make hardware dance to your tune Tribe 3: You are a maker. You build things for people to use alfiedotwtf falls in the first tribe. You fall in the 2nd. Different tribes have different values, and hence all the back and forth.
Comment linking /blog/3-tribes/
on “Show HN: Bel”Submitted Faster CRDTs: An Adventure in Optimization as a story · 686 points
HN discussion12 hours in and the site is up: https://josephg.com/sp/ Polish and perf tuning tomorrow. Code: https://github.com/josephg/sephsplace (warning: contains evil)
Comment linking /sp/
on “How We Built r/Place”Submitted Node.js packages don't deserve trust as a story · 432 points
HN discussionGood news. We need more native apps, which work autonomous and locally and optionally sync with servers. Examples are Git (yeah! --everything-is-local) or any decent Mail-Client. Especially what the industry usually does is not the best, but just the cheapest. https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/
Comment linking /blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/
on “Psst: Fast Spotify client with native GUI, without Electron, built in Rust”Submitted Building a r/place in a weekend as a story · 401 points
HN discussionI've been testing Chrome headless extensively for the past few months, and while it's a good step, but it's not stable for high-volume or even diverse set of webpages. Memory usage is pretty high, lot of heavy webpages result in crashes/hangs, there are many inconsistencies between features available in full version and headless, their debugging protocol has different APIs that work on headless/non-headless in Linux…
Comment linking /blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/
on “Chrome 59 has cross-platform headless support”Submitted Rewriting Rust as a story · 368 points
HN discussionWave used OT rather than CRDTs, as the author discusses in another post: https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/
Comment linking /blog/crdts-are-the-future/
on “Faster CRDTs: An Adventure in Optimization”Submitted Faster CRDTs (2021) as a story · 326 points
HN discussionFunny coincidence... I just ordered a copy of this book yesterday after reading https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/ . I might not be the only one.
Comment linking /blog/crdts-are-the-future/
on “Writing a book: is it worth it?”Submitted Three Tribes of Programming (2017) as a story · 270 points
HN discussionActually not. The problem is, good stuff need enduring hard work. There is no justification of wasting resources, draining the battery and providing bad integration into the environment. It is like Flash: https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/ Why companies use Electron? It saves them money! And the users pay for CPU, RAM and suffer from bad usability. But that doesn't show up on your bill from…
Comment linking /blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/
on “Lapce – Fast open-source code editor”Submitted I was wrong – CRDTs are the future (2020) as a story · 241 points
HN discussionI would start by taking a look at this article; it helped me understand what it is that I personally get out of programming: https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ But I would also say, I don't think there's anything wrong with not enjoying it any more. Few people can do something for decades and still take joy in it. It's great if you can rekindle the fire, but it's also okay if your interests drift elsewhere.
Comment linking /blog/3-tribes/
on “Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?”Submitted Electron is flash for the desktop (2016) as a story · 145 points
HN discussionI don't think the ratio of bad:good new developers varies much by the stack, but I think some stacks push developers "up or out" more than others. Browser frontend has some of the least pressure here because the performance problems are generally paid by someone else's computer. Backend inefficiencies traditionally will eventually saturate your RAM / CPU / I/O ("clouds" removes some of this but you still pay in the…
Comment linking /blog/3-tribes/
on “Mighty Makes Google Chrome Faster”Submitted Tribes of Programming (2017) as a story · 134 points
HN discussion6 months ago I wrote a couple little scripts to download new unsplash into a directory every 6 hours. Then I pointed macos to use random images from that directory for wallpapers. The whole thing is great - its a source of tiny delight throughout my week. Its also a small step toward making my workspace feel more hackable . The whole thing was super hacked together - I'm sure there's nicer solutions around but I'm p…
Comment linking /blog/shiny-background-images/
on “Unsplash – Beautiful photos free to use under the Unsplash License”Submitted Databases have failed the web as a story · 88 points
HN discussionCurrently, https://josephg.com/sp/current returns a png with 3x8 (RGB) bits/pixel. But since the image has only 16 colors, you can reduce its filesize to ~20% (from ~714 to ~147 KB, with http://optipng.sourceforge.net/ ). Can't you can gain performance and reduce bandwith by keeping the image serverside as a 4 bit png?
Comment linking /sp/current
on “Building a r/place in a weekend”Submitted The modern web makes me want to throw up (2016) as a story · 75 points
HN discussion> Algorithmically, this is an interesting problem but it should be quite solvable. Just, for some reason, nobody has worked on this yet. So, thanks for writing this post and bringing more attention to this problem! I'm skeptical that an algorithmic solution will be possible, but I can see this being handled in a UX layer built on top. For example, a client could detect that there's been a conflict based on the editi…
Comment linking /blog/crdts-go-brrr/
on “Lies I was told about collab editing, Part 1: Algorithms for offline editing”Submitted War over Being Nice as a story · 54 points
HN discussion- Native File System support coming to the browser: https://web.dev/file-system-access/ - jamstack.wtf - federation-based networks - CRDTs: https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/ - data-oriented programming paradigm ( https://rugpullindex.com/ shameless plug) - web components: https://docs.ficusjs.org/index.html
Comment linking /blog/crdts-are-the-future/
on “Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?”Submitted In the long run, GPL code becomes irrelevant (2015) as a story · 44 points
HN discussion
