Top all-time · #627
Kent C. Dodds
Personal blog · kentcdodds.com/blogprogrammingwebcareer
Kent C. Dodds's personal blog at kentcdodds.com covers programming, web and career. Since 2015, 99 different Hacker News readers have linked it 127 times, most often “Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 12 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Kent C. Dodds' posts on integration-heavy testing, avoiding hasty abstractions (AHA), React memo/useMemo advice and state management. Mostly cited for testing and React.
- Recommended for · 12 comments
- Called 'great' for JS/React testing views; 'a good read'; 'much better' on state management; 'worth highlighting'.
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.
Come check out how Kent C. Dodds can help you level up your career as a software engineer.
Most-linked posts?
- Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration10 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2019-03-04
- AHA – Avoid Hasty Abstractions8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2019-07-30
- How I built a modern website in 20218 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-10-06
- When to UseMemo and UseCallback6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-04-27
- Application State Management with React4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-04-23
- Inversion of Control: Principle to improve your reusable code4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-11-25
- Maintainability Through Colocation4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-10-16
- Stop Mocking Fetch3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-19
- Stop Being a Junior3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-05-31
- Goodbye Medium3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-03-19
What Hacker News says?
AHA https://kentcdodds.com/blog/aha-programming
Comment linking /blog/aha-programming
on “Goodbye, Clean Code”Submitted How I built a modern website in 2021 as a story · 92 points
HN discussionSurprised I haven't seen https://www.swyx.io/ mentioned for articles in the JS world and general dev stuff https://kentcdodds.com/ Is also great for JS, React especially testing opinions
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Goodbye Medium as a story · 55 points
HN discussionI wonder why nobody mentioned it - there is one more advanced principle AHA: (Avoid Hasty Abstractions) https://kentcdodds.com/blog/aha-programming#aha- Overusing the DRY principle can make software almost unsupportable.
Comment linking /blog/aha-programming
on “Don't DRY Your Code Prematurely”Submitted Stop Using IsLoading Booleans as a story · 28 points
HN discussionDates are in the RSS feed. https://kentcdodds.com/blog/rss.xml
Comment linking /blog/rss.xml
on “Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition (2018)”Submitted First Timers Only as a story · 26 points
HN discussionThe docs are great for a given tidbit, but for structure and "why" I personally don't always get that from the docs and I end up reading something from Kent that tells me why. https://kentcdodds.com/blog/usememo-and-usecallback Granted that's probably because on a good day my reading comprehension is not great and learning within a narrative works way better for me.
Comment linking /blog/usememo-and-usecallback
on “Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition (2018)”Submitted Maintainability Through Colocation as a story · 17 points
HN discussionHere's one: https://remix.run/ These grifters sell entire courses on the product, that's their game. So when you find an unmaintained Remix app at your company, well, the grifters got the ears of your junior devs :( And they just promote it and promote it: https://kentcdodds.com/blog/a-review-of-my-time-at-remix https://kentcdodds.com/blog/why-i-love-remix https://kentcdodds.com/courses Pure grift. But since most pe…
Comment linking /courses
on “The Frontend Treadmill”Submitted I Migrated from a Postgres Cluster to Distributed SQLite with LiteFS as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> I don't recall where I picked up from, but the best advice I've heard on this is a "Rule of 3" I know this as AHA = Avoid Hasty Abstractions: - https://kentcdodds.com/blog/aha-programming - https://sandimetz.com/blog/2016/1/20/the-wrong-abstraction
Comment linking /blog/aha-programming
on “It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code (2020)”Submitted Use ternaries rather than and& in JSX as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in the ‘testing trophy’ as an alternative to the traditional pyramid. https://kentcdodds.com/blog/write-tests
Comment linking /blog/write-tests
on “Testcontainers”Submitted Offloading FFmpeg with Cloudflare as a story · 3 points
HN discussion1) At least in the Java world, the term "unit testing" is often confused by "things you do in JUnit", which runs both "pure" unit tests and project-level integration tests, i.e. spinning up an application context (like Spring) and testing against real REST endpoints etc. 2) While unit tests are cheaper and quicker than (project-level) integration tests, they also in many cases don't provide results as good a result…
Comment linking /blog/the-testing-trophy-and-testing-classifications
on “Testcontainers”Submitted Stop Being a Junior as a story · 3 points
HN discussionwhy can't you just build your REST API on the Express backend Pretty sure he means to set up the REST api in Express with a few simple routes. JS is not complex, and pretty vanilla choice. It’s what people add on top of it that gives it a bad name. I’ll link to this guy so you can understand: https://kentcdodds.com/blog/how-i-built-a-modern-website-in-... ^ This is the problem, not JavaScript.
Comment linking /blog/how-i-built-a-modern-website-in-2021
on “WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers”Submitted Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think Kent C. Dodds gets to the goal behind the DRY principle fairly well here: https://kentcdodds.com/blog/aha-programming
Comment linking /blog/aha-programming
on “DRY is an over-rated programming principle?”Submitted A review of my time at Remix as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://kentcdodds.com/blog/write-tests Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration.
Comment linking /blog/write-tests
on “Ask HN: What made you change your mind about a programming language/paradigm?”Submitted Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe blog is sooo good! I enjoyed every single paragraph when reading it. If you're confused about the last part where it mentioned where useMemo and useCallback can help when passing props, I completely understand after reading Kent C Dodds block and Dan Abramov. Further, I learned a lot by taking interactive course from Dan Abramov in https://justjavascript.com Highly recommended! good read!! https://kentcdodds.com…
Comment linking /blog/usememo-and-usecallback
on “Why React Re-Renders”Submitted Don't Solve Problems, Eliminate Them as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHaven’t come across this before but I can see myself using this framework of how, what and why in the future. Few thoughts… How: Talking as a mid level programmer, I can’t control the language of choice, I can’t influence the framework or the design. I can control how the individual piece of algorithm is written. What: Apart from the function names, the main important thing here is abstraction. Abstraction is a long…
Comment linking /blog/aha-programming
on “Writing maintainable code is a communication skill”Submitted Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHey - author here. Try Redux; acemarke has been evangelizing Redux Toolkit [1] recently and it looks great for a beginner not familiar to the Redux ecosystem. But also - if Redux just isn't clicking for you, or if it is but you feel like writing it is unnatural - know that you're not alone. Learn MobX, learn how to manage state with context and hooks [2], learn Apollo Client. Yes it's a lot of up-front work, but you…
Comment linking /blog/application-state-management-with-react
on “Things I wish I knew about state management when I started writing React apps”Submitted JavaScript to Know for React as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
