Top all-time · #2053
Rafe Colburn
Personal blog · rc3.orgprogrammingcareer
Rafe Colburn writes RC3.org, a personal blog at rc3.org about programming and career. Since 2008, 37 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “Surprisingly, Perl outperforms sed and Awk”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Rafe Colburn's posts on engineering management, Perl outperforming sed in benchmarks, and vim as a grammar. The comments cite these posts as support rather than praising the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
RC3.org Blog
Most-linked posts?
- Surprisingly, Perl outperforms sed and Awk3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-08
- Don’t get stuck: Continuous Deployment2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-03-04
- The Grammar of Vim2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-12
- Signs of dysfunctional engineering teams2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-07-29
What Hacker News says?
I'm reminded of a blog post ( https://rc3.org/2015/12/29/answering-the-question-should-man... , focused on software engineering managers rather than CTOs), which posited this guideline: "A manager actively avoids creating situations where their coding is necessary for the success of the project." I agree with Aditya's article. A CTO must be technical for all the reasons stated. I would add another reason to his list…
Comment linking /2015/12/29/answering-the-question-should-managers-code/
on “A CTO should be technical”Submitted The Grammar of Vim as a story · 125 points
HN discussionPerl is much faster[0], with much more features, with bunch of ready to use libraries, with package manager (CPAN), and similar syntax to awk. Why you use awk? [0]: http://rc3.org/2014/08/28/surprisingly-perl-outperforms-sed-...
Comment linking /2014/08/28/surprisingly-perl-outperforms-sed-and-awk/
on “Why Learn Awk? (2016)”Submitted Hate Driven Development as a story · 41 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of a recent discussion where someone mentioned tools over process. ( http://rc3.org/2013/07/29/seven-signs-of-dysfunctional-engin... ) I would say that the 'law' is just subjective manual process, and we desperately need more tools for every-day judgement and decision making. For example, if there were a computer system that logged all corporate financial transactions including income, then we could…
Comment linking /2013/07/29/seven-signs-of-dysfunctional-engineering-teams/
on “The entire US Code is now online in XML”Submitted Blizzard continues to innovate on the security front as a story · 39 points
HN discussionRafe Colburn from Etsy wrote about this performance oddity: http://rc3.org/2014/08/28/surprisingly-perl-outperforms-sed-... EDIT to manage expectations: the article doesn't explain why, it just provides benchmarks and one commenter made a suggestion about character handling. More insight still welcome :)
Comment linking /2014/08/28/surprisingly-perl-outperforms-sed-and-awk/
on “Sed – An Introduction and Tutorial”Submitted Extreme agility (with more on GitHub process by rtomayko) as a story · 33 points
HN discussionApposite: "Don't Pile On" - http://rc3.org/2015/02/14/dont-pile-on/
Comment linking /2015/02/14/dont-pile-on/
on “The Internet Shaming of Lindsey Stone”Submitted The opportunity cost of a broad skillset as a story · 30 points
HN discussionYou can sign your messages using HMAC[1]. That's what Facebook does when it makes HTTP requests to your application. [1] http://rc3.org/2011/12/02/using-hmac-to-authenticate-web-ser...
Comment linking /2011/12/02/using-hmac-to-authenticate-web-service-requests/
on “Service Oriented Problems”Submitted Classifying Software Developers as a story · 25 points
HN discussionvim is a grammar, a true grammar, once you learn that, it all makes sense. http://rc3.org/2012/05/12/the-grammar-of-vim/
Comment linking /2012/05/12/the-grammar-of-vim/
on “Why, oh WHY, do those #? nutheads use vi?”Submitted Is this really why people are returning to java?? as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why are Apple laptops becoming harder to take apart? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why is MySQL more popular than PostgreSQL? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted How simple features become complicated as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why do good people build bad applications? (RE: $200,000 OSHA app) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Third Kind of Freedom (Rafe Colburn) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don’t get stuck: Continuous Deployment as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted PHP’s hidden strength as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are great programmers hired or made? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Signs of dysfunctional engineering teams as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is the iPad the harbinger of doom for personal computing? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stealing A Penny From Every Transaction as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Surprisingly, Perl outperforms sed and Awk as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Soul of a New Machine as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted G. K. Chesterton on software development as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What’s Ruby’s future? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to report on information security as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
