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weblog.raganwald.com
Personal blog · weblog.raganwald.comprogrammingphilosophy
weblog.raganwald.com is a personal blog at weblog.raganwald.com about programming and philosophy. Since 2007, 115 different Hacker News readers have linked it 269 times, most often “Why Why Functional Programming Matters Matters”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its short programming essays, mainly on FizzBuzz hiring tests, sharecropping on platforms, the Blub paradox and functional programming.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called a great blogpost and a nice relevant post; one commenter says it makes them think more reliably than other software writers.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- /2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz.html8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2009-08-30
- Why Why Functional Programming Matters Matters7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2007-03-13
- My favourite interview question7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2010-12-10
- Sharecropping in the Orchard: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose6 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2008-04-09
- Why you need a degree to work at Bigco6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2007-03-02
- Are we Blub programmers? (2006)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2007-09-30
- (1..100).inject(&:+)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2008-02-25
- You Suck (On web apps that mismanage text)4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2008-04-10
- What I've Learned From Sales, Part I: Don't Feed the Trolls4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2007-12-11
- The Naive Approach to Hiring People4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-02-11
What Hacker News says?
Churchill: “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?” Socialite: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…” Churchill: “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?” Socialite: “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!” Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.” http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/hag…
Comment linking /2007/07/haggling-about-price.html
on “The top-ranking HTML editor on Google is an SEO scam”Submitted Why Why Functional Programming Matters Matters (2007) as a story · 141 points
HN discussionSharecropper woes: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-freedom-to-eat-pizza http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...
Comment linking /2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html
on “I was once a Facebook fool”Submitted My favourite interview question as a story · 126 points
HN discussionIt is. There are a lot of really bad programmers out there. However, you're probably not looking at the places where such programmers would apply... try an entry-level job here in Uruguay (pay: about U$ 800 / month after taxes), you'll get a lot of people that fail fizz-buzz . The original poster (Imran Ghory) was from the UK, and Reginald is from Canada. Neither are Silicon Valley. http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24…
Comment linking /2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz.html
on “Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code”Submitted A Brief History of Dangerous Ideas as a story · 123 points
HN discussionReminds me of this[1] great blogpost: "This abstraction adds overhead. “Abstracting” the common operation has made it more difficult to read, not less difficult to read. People for who consider meta-programming some sort of Black Magic often make this exact point: The mechanism for removing duplication adds complexity itself. One view is that the overall effect is only a win if the complexity added is small compared…
Comment linking /2007/12/golf-is-good-program-spoiled.html
on “Don't DRY Your Code Prematurely”Submitted My favourite interview question (2006) as a story · 105 points
HN discussionSomething like this? http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/02/naive-approach-to-hiring...
Comment linking /2008/02/naive-approach-to-hiring-people.html
on “I don't hire unlucky people”Submitted You Suck (On web apps that mismanage text) as a story · 102 points
HN discussionLike all platform owners, Apple gradually commoditizes its complements. The most extreme end of this behaviour is when they release a free app or feature that wipes everyone else out (or drives them into tiny niches). iTunes was a famous example: It instantly obsoleted indie music apps on the Macintosh. We had a good time discussing this fifteen years ago(!) when Cabel Sasser, cofounder of Panic Software, wrote abou…
Comment linking /2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html
on “Apple has copied some of the most popular apps in the App Store”Submitted Why Why Functional Programming Matters Matters as a story · 99 points
HN discussionI remember a colleague who was affronted at being asked to do Fizzbuzz. I told him it was just a simple screen for fraudsters and bullshit artists and not to take it personally, they didn't know him from Adam, after all. http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz....
Comment linking /2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz.html
on “Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers”Submitted A degree is only as meaningful as its scarcity [2008] as a story · 78 points
HN discussionI suggest you are suffering from the Blub Paradox[0][1][2]. [0] http://paulgraham.com/avg.html [1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox [2] http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/10/are-we-blub-programmers....
Comment linking /2006/10/are-we-blub-programmers.html
on “Python Language Features and Tricks”Submitted Beware of the Turing tar-pit (2004) as a story · 67 points
HN discussionIt is just the most recent (I wanted to write last , but I'm sure it is not the last) of many similar stories and articles, which can be summed up as "Do not be a sharecropper." Some previous ones: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...
Comment linking /2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html
on “Serving at the Pleasure of the King”Submitted My analyst warned me, but metaprogramming was so beautiful I got another analyst as a story · 61 points
HN discussionYou have a choice of koolaid. The waterfall brand is implicit in the statement "We don't write a line of code until we know your business as well as the people who keep it running every day." - it is founded on the assumption that you can finish requirements for the entire system before starting to deliver working software, and no feedback or iteration is needed. My experience is that for the majority of software pr…
Comment linking /2007/06/which-theory-first-evidence.html
on “We've invented waterfall”Submitted Why Apple is more expensive than Amazon as a story · 57 points
HN discussionFor your reading pleasure: “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful: http://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html Three blog posts I'd love to read (and one that I wouldn't): http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/three-blog-posts-id-love...
Comment linking /2007/10/three-blog-posts-id-love-to-read-and.html
on “Garmin Connect team asked to relocate - this is how they declined”Submitted The Revolution will not be on Youtube as a story · 54 points
HN discussionIt's hard to escape reimplementing streams after reading SICP, because Lazy evaluation is the red pill : http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/02/haskell-ruby-and-infinit...
Comment linking /2007/02/haskell-ruby-and-infinity.html
on “Introducing a new data structure, streams, in Javascript”Submitted Narcissism of small code differences as a story · 53 points
HN discussionThank you Reginald. You always make me think, more reliably than any other writer about software. You pose interesting questions and have interesting viewpoints and discussion related to those questions. I hope you feel proud about this ability, because you should. I also appreciate that you have chosen to publish your writing more in a blog format just like on http://weblog.raganwald.com instead of the GitHub exper…
Comment linking /
on “The Mother of All Interview Questions”Submitted David Heinemeier Hansson step aside, Paul Graham is next to be voted off the island as a story · 53 points
HN discussionI love the idea because it's like an automatic FizzBuzz filter http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz....
Comment linking /2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz.html
on “Show HN: Apply for a job through SSH, $ ssh jobs.hackclub.com”Submitted You and Your Research as a story · 40 points
HN discussionIn many cases it is worth far more to a company to get a solution out the door in 12 months at greater expense than to wait for a more cost-efficient team to finish in, say, 24. I ask whether we can just take it as a given that large teams can get a given piece of software done more quickly than a small team. It may happen some of the time, it may not. But I have trouble granting it as axiomatic, for reasons that wo…
Comment linking /2007/08/bricks.html
on “Small teams are dramatically more efficient than large teams”Submitted My Mixed Feelings about Ruby as a story · 38 points
HN discussion
