Top all-time · #685
Steve Klabnik
Personal blog · steveklabnik.com/writing · on HN as steveklabnikprogrammingphilosophy
Steve Klabnik's personal blog at steveklabnik.com covers programming and philosophy. Since 2011, 93 different Hacker News readers have linked it 162 times, most often “The Language Strangeness Budget”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 6 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Readers link Steve Klabnik's writing on Rust, learning C, and open source, including 'C is not how the computer works' and 'you can't turn off the borrow checker'.
- Recommended for · 6 comments
- Commenters call his posts a good read, 'very generous' on Ada, and a great post on WebAssembly as a runtime.
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.
Steve Klabnik's personal website — writing about Rust, Ruby, open source, philosophy, and more.
Most-linked posts?
- The Language Strangeness Budget7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-07-12
- A sad day for Rust: actix-web is dead (2020)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-07-05
- Choosing Languages5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-03-13
- How often does Rust change?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-03-19
- Thirteen years of Rust and the birth of Rue4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-12-21
- Rust's Golden Rule4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-03-27
- Should you learn C to "learn how the computer works"?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-08-25
- Getting started with Claude for software development4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-07
- Arguing about Arguments4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-21
- Is Rust faster than C?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-06-09
What Hacker News says?
This reminds me of a blog post by Steve Klabnik (on the community team of Rust currently) about how he went through the Ruby on Rails backlog once similarly. It's a good read: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/how-to-be-an-open-source-ga...
Comment linking /writing/how-to-be-an-open-source-gardener
on “Embrace the Grind”Submitted I see a future in jj as a story · 376 points
HN discussion> One of the problems is that if your target market is other devs, there is a knee jerk demand that your software should be foss and free (as in beer). The problem with source-available COSS licenses like SSPLv1, BSLv1, Perimeter etc is that, it almost to the point of insulting developers who care about FOSS, wants to have its cake and eat it too: That is, the benefits of both, open and proprietary software. That's…
Comment linking /writing/the-culture-war-at-the-heart-of-open-source
on “The gift of it's your problem now”Submitted How Does Bluesky Work? as a story · 248 points
HN discussionThe main feature of rust isn't borrow checking, the feature is safe low level programming . Borrow checking is Rust's default way of doing this, but it's not the only one (the standard library has Reference Counting primitives built in). Borrow checking is a way to make manual memory management safe, ECS works around manual memory management entirely, so it doesn't need borrow checking to be safe (which is also why…
Comment linking /writing/rust-is-more-than-safety
on “Migrating away from Rust”Submitted Memory safety is necessary, not sufficient as a story · 193 points
HN discussionhttps://oxide.computer/ I wrote a blog post about it https://steveklabnik.com/writing/today-is-my-first-day-at-ox...
Comment linking /writing/today-is-my-first-day-at-oxide-computer-company
on “Laying the foundation for Rust’s future”Submitted I am disappointed in the AI discourse as a story · 65 points
HN discussion> I'm curious if you have references or more explanation about the difference you're trying to draw, since it's one I haven't seen before. My distinction between the two is whether outside contributions make it back into the original project. Free Software is about the rights of end users to inspect the code and make and distribute their own modifications, but then Open Source takes it a bit further by explicitly so…
Comment linking /writing/a-sad-day-for-rust
on “Eden”Submitted Today is my first day at Oxide Computer Company as a story · 65 points
HN discussionIronic that the author's homepage ( http://steveklabnik.com/ ) is a confusing pretend console that takes several seconds (on every visit!) to reveal useful information.
Comment linking /
on “Nobody Understands REST or HTTP”Submitted Against Names as a story · 56 points
HN discussionRust was created before Mozilla got interested in it: http://www.steveklabnik.com/history-of-rust/
Comment linking /history-of-rust/
on “Rust vs. Go”Submitted How often does Rust change? as a story · 44 points
HN discussionWell, I certainly wasn't speaking about you specifically. However, did you not say that language promotion is what you do and that you quit Mozilla for not paying you enough for it here: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/thank-u-next ?
Comment linking /writing/thank-u-next
on “Understanding Rust futures by going way too deep”Submitted Using the Oxide Console as a story · 29 points
HN discussion> that none of them -- X, Bluesky, Threads, or anything similar -- should be considered "the commons". They're private businesses with their own motives that are often in complete conflict with your own. Having seen this process of creation sustaining & decaying happen again and again, I totally get why you would feel this. And I forgive you for applying the thinning broadly like this, casting insidious doubt widely…
Comment linking /writing/how-does-bluesky-work
on “Maybe Bluesky has "won"”Submitted Rust's Golden Rule as a story · 21 points
HN discussionI wrote a blog post that may help you! https://steveklabnik.com/writing/when-should-i-use-string-vs... If you want to understand more deeply, the Rust Programming Langauge, chapter 4, uses String and &String and &str to talk about ownership and borrowing. Here’s a link to the start of that chapter: https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/book/ch04-00-understanding-...
Comment linking /writing/when-should-i-use-string-vs-str/
on “Pretty.c”Submitted A sad day for Rust: actix-web is dead (2020) as a story · 21 points
HN discussionHa, you're actually kind of right. That article doesn't quite say what I remembered it saying. Been a while since I read it. I'd say about half the points are still applicable, but it is more pro-browser than me for sure. Too late to edit, but Steve's previous blog post probably presents my point better, though with less focus on the vs Java argument: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/webassembly-is-more-than-ju...
Comment linking /writing/webassembly-is-more-than-just-the-web
on “Wasmer 1.0”Submitted Is WebAssembly the Return of Java Applets and Flash? (2018) as a story · 20 points
HN discussionBrowsers are not the right tool for sandboxing applications. I don't think it was a mistake, but it's time to take what we've learned and move to the next level. With a bytecode like wasm, you can create an "app runner" program that's at least an order of magnitude less complicated than current browsers. Just ship apps as wasm binaries with a simple interface (maybe WASI, haven't taken the time to dig into it yet) f…
Comment linking /writing/is-webassembly-the-return-of-java-applets-flash
on “Wasmer 1.0”Submitted Choosing Languages as a story · 16 points
HN discussionI think you're right, the apology is here https://steveklabnik.com/writing/node
Comment linking /writing/node
on “Being Ridiculed for My Open Source Project (2013)”Submitted Rust 1.0, ten years later as a story · 13 points
HN discussionHe did acknowledge it later: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/trolling-is-a-art
Comment linking /writing/trolling-is-a-art
on “Being Ridiculed for My Open Source Project (2013)”Submitted Is Rust faster than C? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionNo, it is not. In fact, it is often seen as a good thing: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/the-language-strangeness-bu...
Comment linking /writing/the-language-strangeness-budget
on “Tour of Rust”Submitted Does unsafe undermine Rust's guarantees? as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
