Top all-time · #1969
Martijn Faassen
Personal blog · blog.startifact.comprogramming
Martijn Faassen writes Secret Weblog, a personal blog at blog.startifact.com about programming. Since 2013, 37 different Hacker News readers have linked it 46 times, most often “Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Martijn Faassen's blog for posts on Python style and the Python 2 to 3 transition, on the Xee XPath/XSLT engine in Rust, on succinct data structures, and on GraphQL backends.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Described as a better introduction to succinct tries than other material on the topic.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Martijn Faassen's secret weblog
Most-linked posts?
- Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-28
- Repeat Yourself, a Bit3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-01-27
- What is Pythonic? (2005)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-07-21
- Succinct data structures3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-06
- The Gravity of Python 22 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-09
- The Humble for Loop in JavaScript2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-11
- Random Rust Impressions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-07
- The Emerging GraphQL Python Stack2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-28
- The Curious Case of Quentell2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-30
- /posts/older/what-is-pythonic.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-01-11
What Hacker News says?
So I get you don't use Python as well. https://blog.startifact.com/posts/older/what-is-pythonic.htm... https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/
Comment linking /posts/older/what-is-pythonic.html
on “Welcome Chris Lattner”Submitted Succinct data structures as a story · 588 points
HN discussionThere is a better alternative to libxslt - xee[1][2]. It was discussed[3] on HN before. [1] https://blog.startifact.com/posts/xee/ [2] https://github.com/Paligo/xee [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43502291
Comment linking /posts/xee/
on “"Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"”Submitted Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust as a story · 381 points
HN discussionAnything could be supported with sufficient effort, but streaming hasn't been my priority so far and I haven't explored it in detail. I want to get XSLT 3.0 working properly first. There's a potential alternative to streaming, though - succinct storage of XML in memory: https://blog.startifact.com/posts/succinct/ I've built a succinct XML library named Xoz (not integrated into Xee yet): https://github.com/Paligo/xoz…
Comment linking /posts/succinct/
on “Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust”Submitted Framework Patterns (2019) as a story · 175 points
HN discussionWhich statistics? I'm honestly curious. I presume you've read http://blog.startifact.com/posts/python-2-gravity.html ? All the new python3/python2 libraries I've noticed adhoc recently have been doing the horrible 'polyglot' one-code-base-support-python2-and-python3 thing, or been in python2.
Comment linking /posts/python-2-gravity.html
on “Why CCP is still using Python 2”Submitted Don’t look down on print debugging as a story · 112 points
HN discussionYes, it is. Coming to this mess from the joy of bundler/gems, npm, or hell, even CPAN will ruin your afternoon. It is just an unfortunate circumstance of the community not efficiently converging on well designed standards quickly enough, and so, the rocky soil has sprouted strange twisty crops. There are articles on how the setuptools/distutils frankenhack pretty much set off the whole trainwreck that you see today,…
Comment linking /posts/older/a-history-of-python-packaging.html
on “Python on Wheels”Submitted Roll Your Own Frameworks as a story · 111 points
HN discussionThere are some backend implementations: http://blog.startifact.com/posts/the-emerging-graphql-python...
Comment linking /posts/the-emerging-graphql-python-stack.html
on “Thinking in GraphQL”Submitted The humble for loop in Rust as a story · 94 points
HN discussionWe are a product of our history - and the same goes with the community around any given technology, not to mention the technology itself. Understanding that history helps you to understand the mindset of the people who created the technology and why and how they designed it. Understanding that will in turn enable you to appreciate and utilize the strengths and weaknesses of said technology better. One good example:…
Comment linking /posts/older/what-is-pythonic.html
on “Ask HN: Does knowing the history of a programming language or technology matter?”Submitted Framework Patterns as a story · 94 points
HN discussionA better intro to them is at https://blog.startifact.com/posts/succinct/
Comment linking /posts/succinct/
on “Fast and Easy Levenshtein distance using a Trie”Submitted The Curious Case of Quentell as a story · 80 points
HN discussionI think that's a great reason then! AI has really given Python a whole new life. I personally find pythonic style[0] easy to follow but really odd and uncomfortable to code in. It's certainly different enough to give you new challenges. [0] https://blog.startifact.com/posts/older/what-is-pythonic.htm...
Comment linking /posts/older/what-is-pythonic.html
on “Ask HN: I've learned JavaScript, should I learn Python?”Submitted What is Pythonic? (2005) as a story · 40 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Was a 1980s Teenage Programmer as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Emerging GraphQL Python Stack as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Call of Python 2.8 as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Framework Patterns as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Overwhelmed by JavaScript Dependencies as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is premature optimization the root of all evil? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Gravity of Python 2 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Repeat Yourself, a Bit as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Repeat Yourself, a Bit as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Curious Case of Quentell as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Humble for Loop in JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
