Top all-time · #1172
Thorsten Ball
Personal blog · registerspill.thorstenball.comprogrammingwritingai
Thorsten Ball writes Register Spill, a personal blog at registerspill.thorstenball.com about programming, writing and ai. Since 2023, 57 different Hacker News readers have linked it 134 times, most often “From Vim to Zed”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on shell internals, such as job control and the risks of spawning child processes. The one comment cites 'How to Lose Control of your Shell' as a source for its own point.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Thoughts about software engineering I can't keep in my head. Too ephemeral for blog posts, too long for social media. It's the messages I'd send if you'd asked me what's on my mind. Click to read Register Spill, by Thorsten Ball, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- From Vim to Zed6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-04-05
- Exploring the C4 Compiler?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-05-10
- Skin-Shedding Code (2024)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-09-27
- How I Use Git4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-10-16
- Building Software Is Learning4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-06-02
- How fast is your shell?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-01-14
- Allergic to Waiting4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-07-23
- Be Findable3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-06-01
- Ownership3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-07-15
- Apple's APFS Migration: A Feat of Engineering3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-04-14
What Hacker News says?
FWIW here is another piece of trivia about job control: the API means you can't spawn a child process "safely" in POSIX -- you have to trust that that the executable you're spawning is well-behaved (or use more advanced Linux process isolation) In this case it was the Zed editor spawning the zsh shell: How to Lose Control of your Shell - https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/how-to-lose-control... zsh has a bug w…
Comment linking /p/how-to-lose-control-of-your-shell
on “Building a Shell”Submitted Losing faith in testing as a story · 192 points
HN discussionSubmitted Keeping a long shell history as a story · 176 points
HN discussionSubmitted Zed Editor: All Occurrences Search from 1s to 4ms as a story · 137 points
HN discussionSubmitted Apple's APFS Migration: A Feat of Engineering as a story · 91 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Lose Control of Your Shell as a story · 89 points
HN discussionSubmitted How I Use Git as a story · 87 points
HN discussionSubmitted With Nothing to Do as a story · 47 points
HN discussionSubmitted How I use git as a story · 41 points
HN discussionSubmitted Two Types of Software Engineers as a story · 41 points
HN discussionSubmitted Glad I did it in Go as a story · 35 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Setup, April 2024 as a story · 30 points
HN discussionSubmitted APFS Migration: A Feat of Engineering as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Few Words on Testing as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted Exploring the C4 Compiler? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Oh, to turn off your mind as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Did you know about Instruments? as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Skin-Shedding Code (2024) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted They All Use It as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rust Prism as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted A New Kind of Code as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Vim to Zed as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Vim to Zed as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted From 1s to 4ms as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Messy Page Or: why I don't like greenfield projects as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Use test data that looks like data as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted There's Beauty in AI as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Vim to Zed as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rust Prism as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted How I use git as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
