9 ms·

Programming blogs

286 points by jsnell 11y ago

henrik_w 11y ago
I only recently found Dan Luu's blog (from the excellent Google SRE book review and the "We only hire the trendiest" posts), and really like it. Of the listed blogs, I have previously read Steve Yegge, Eli Bendersky and Yossi Kreinin - all three fantastic. I'll have fun going through the rest in the list.
psisous 11y ago
obligatory http://blog.codinghorror.com/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/ mention
Ace17 11y ago
Uncle Bob anyone? http://blog.cleancoder.com/ http://blog.cleancoder.com/
- kragen 11y ago
  Nope, Uncle Bob is a know-nothing blowhard with a grossly inflated opinion of his own competence and an attitude problem to match. Sometimes he says things that are true, and sometimes he says things that are just false enough to be badly misleading, and you can't tell the difference unless you already know it. He consistently substitutes dogma for evidence and insight. Not recommended.
  - Ace17 11y ago
    Interesting. Could you please give an example of one thing he said that was "just false enough to be badly misleading" ? (Not trying to prove you wrong here, just being curious)
    - kragen 11y ago
      Here's a list of errors I found in an article of his about a year ago: https://lobste.rs/c/grmdxi https://lobste.rs/c/grmdxi
      - Ace17 11y ago
        Thanks, but the comment you linked to is just a list of disagreements without explanations (whose author even admits it later by stating that "simple ridicule is both easier to write and more entertaining to read" (!)). I was hoping for something more tangible. Searching wikipedia doesn't support the author's claims about FP ( things like "FP is about higher-order abstraction facilities, not immutability").
        kragen 11y ago
        Yeah, I didn't bother to explain in depth how things really are, because that would have required an order of magnitude more effort than just listing Bob's absurd nonsense claims, which is adequate for my audience. I'm sorry that Wikipedia isn't sufficiently clear and correct to replace knowing what you're talking about, and I'd fix that if I knew how, but I don't. Teaching difficult ways of thinking, in person, to people who trust and respect you, is already hard enough. Trying to teach them to random people on the internet who think you're quite possibly full of shit and may not even bother reading to the end of what you write, that's an exercise in futility. Forgive me if I don't accept the implied invitation.
afarrell 11y ago
> a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it. Question for other folks here: In your experience, does staying up until 4:00AM tend to lead to you being more or less productive in the long term?
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Less, for a few days, if you do it once. Doing it regularly leads to lower productivity until you quit doing it.
- robertelder 11y ago
  I've had it go both ways before, but I noticed during university when I was forced to do such things that after you've had a couple weeks to rest, whatever you were working on before becomes crystal clear in a way that it wouldn't have been if you just relaxed and made steady progress. Probably something to do with the stress burns it into your brain.
- dave2000 11y ago
  More, because I can get 4 more hours done than if I go to bed at midnight and I am more motivated later and far less likely to be disturbed. I can't do it as much these days because I have a day job which gets in the way.
- sbov 11y ago
  If you've been working on a bug for an hour+ and it's 2AM it usually means it's time to put the keyboard down. For me, what usually happens is I go to sleep, wake up, and have it fixed in 5 minutes.
  - stronglikedan 11y ago
    That was the only thing cigarettes were ever good for! Back when I smoked, if I was stuck on something, I would go have a cigarette. Most of the time I would have the answer (or at least a hint) when I came back in. Some say that nicotine temporarily increases brain function, so I just chalked it up to that.
asamarin 11y ago
Some extra suggestions: - Null Program: http://nullprogram.com/index/ http://nullprogram.com/index/ - Insane Coding: http://insanecoding.blogspot.com http://insanecoding.blogspot.com - Agner Fog's Blog: http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog
swah 11y ago
If you're listing V8, might as well add Andy Wingo: wingolog.org
devy 11y ago
I love Gary Bernhardt's writings, screencasts and lightning talks and his sense of humor, especially this one[1]. But unfortunately, some JavaScript developers might feel it offensive. [1] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
- Ace17 11y ago
  The one you linked is a must-watch!
- gjolund 11y ago
  I love that video. There is nothing offensive in the video, I think he does a pretty good job explaining how bat shit ridiculous javascript is. If you are writing js professionally and haven't already come to terms with that and the existential crisis it entails... you're gonna have a bad time.
  - MIKarlsen 11y ago
    I know I shouldn't be turned off by this, but I so am. And I'm starting to dislike the dev-community more and more for each day I try to learn programming myself. Elitism at its worst. I guess it started a few years back when I started an introductory programming-class at university where I was supposed to learn Java. I had already tried some light-weight languages like HTML and CSS and felt comfortable modding Wordpress-solutions. At the time, I studied a non-tech minor, and worked at an it-consultancy with a bunch of guys roughly my age. We were pretty good friends, but I strongly remember how they ridiculed Java as being old and outdated, and how I was wasting my time trying to learn more than the course expected of me. And it actually turned me off a lot, mainly because I thought these guys knew what they were talking about. About a year ago, I tried my way with python for web-scraping and some light scripting, but ran into the same ridicule by a co-worker where I had my internship. This february I finished my liberal arts'ish IT-master degree, and decided that I needed to learn how to do some code in order to get better at my job, and understanding it and tech in general. This time, I'm focussing on FreeCodeCamp, and I'm dedicated to learn Javascript and front-end development. Because I've realized that there will always be people who trash-talk other languages, and I've learned that no languages are better or worse than others. I just think it's so frustrating asking for advice online when you run into people who fanatically defend one coding-language as "the only one" and trash talk everything else. So fuck the haters - I'm learning Javascript, and it's gonna help me build some super cool apps that will help a lot of people!
dmit 11y ago
Here are some software engineering blogs from my RSS reader in addition to the ones listed in TFA. I honestly don't know how over or underrated they are, but I guess that varies depending on which communities you're closer to. Mikola Lysenko https://0fps.net https://0fps.net Graphics programming, geometry and algorithms. --- Steven Wittens http://acko.net http://acko.net Not underrated in any sense of the word, but I have to include it in case there are people who haven't seen it yet. It's about math and graphics, but also about art and design. Amazingly educational. http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/ http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/ is a good starting point for new readers. --- Mark Nottingham https://www.mnot.net/blog/ https://www.mnot.net/blog/ Networking and HTTP. --- Jeff Preshing http://preshing.com http://preshing.com Efficient concurrent data structures. --- Bruce Dawson https://randomascii.wordpress.com https://randomascii.wordpress.com Software efficiency, performance optimization, fractals and more. --- Yann Collet http://fastcompression.blogspot.com http://fastcompression.blogspot.com Modern compression algorithms. --- Gil Tene http://stuff-gil-says.blogspot.com http://stuff-gil-says.blogspot.com Also definitely not underrated, at least not in the Java world. But any engineer who cares about latency and honest benchmarks will benefit. Low latency techniques, GC performance, lock-free programming. --- Tony Finch http://fanf.livejournal.com http://fanf.livejournal.com C and UNIX programming, and more. --- Andy Wingo https://wingolog.org https://wingolog.org Scheme, Compilers, JavaScript, and much more. --- Aleksey Shipilёv http://shipilev.net http://shipilev.net JDK internals, low-level optimization.
0x54MUR41 11y ago
Some suggestions are here [1]. This is a curated list of engineering blogs from both individual and company contributors. [1]: https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs
williamkennedy 11y ago
I love Scott Hanselman's blog. It's one of those blogs I check in with every so often. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ http://www.hanselman.com/blog/
- squeakynick 11y ago
  Are we allowed to mention our own blogs? :) http://datagenetics.com/blog.html http://datagenetics.com/blog.html
  - williamkennedy 11y ago
    Glad you did. Had a quick look. Found this post quite interesting http://datagenetics.com/blog/march12016/index.html http://datagenetics.com/blog/march12016/index.html
  - MaurizioPz 11y ago
    Since you did I might as well. Me and my brother are starting out on our blogging "careers" so I would love to hear your opinions http://codecleane.rs http://codecleane.rs It's about software craftmanship in an enterprise environment
    - williamkennedy 11y ago
      Looks great. Here is a quick tip that I think could really help first-time visitors and of course your own blog. I think you could add an "about" page just to let people know what your site is about. I hope this feedback is useful as is my intention. Since we are on the subject of personal blogs is http://www.new2code.com http://www.new2code.com which aims to help people get their first job in tech. I expand on other themes in the future but right now I want to learn and share as much as I can about getting that first software development job.
hwangmoretime 11y ago
Cool. I just checked if there might be an awesome list[1] on Github for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, they only have one that lists tech companies' engineering blogs: https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs [1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome
dclowd9901 11y ago
Might I suggest Mr. Blake Ross' blogs? His post "Mr. Fart's Favorite Colors" is among my favorite blog reads of all time. https://medium.com/@blakeross https://medium.com/@blakeross
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
perrupa 11y ago
I'm not a hundred percent sure if he has a blog, but rich hickey is the speaker/writer who has most consistently blown my mind our shifted the way I think about programming. This is probably the best resource here: https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub I'd recommend starting with "simple made easy" Also, he created Clojure :)
akkartik 11y ago
This post inspired me to give my feeds a public home: http://akkartik.name/feeds.xml http://akkartik.name/feeds.xml. You can see all the ones I stole from OP at the top of the list. Compared to OP's more curated list, many of my subscriptions post only intermittently, but that doesn't bother me. Instead, if a site posts too frequently I might boot it from my subscriptions. RSS is only for sites that I never want to miss a single story from.

286 points by jsnell 11y ago

I only recently found Dan Luu's blog (from the excellent Google SRE book review and the "We only hire the trendiest" posts), and really like it. Of the listed blogs, I have previously read Steve Yegge, Eli Bendersky and Yossi Kreinin - all three fantastic. I'll have fun going through the rest in the list.

psisous 11y ago

obligatory http://blog.codinghorror.com/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/ mention

Ace17 11y ago

Uncle Bob anyone? http://blog.cleancoder.com/ http://blog.cleancoder.com/

kragen 11y ago
Nope, Uncle Bob is a know-nothing blowhard with a grossly inflated opinion of his own competence and an attitude problem to match. Sometimes he says things that are true, and sometimes he says things that are just false enough to be badly misleading, and you can't tell the difference unless you already know it. He consistently substitutes dogma for evidence and insight. Not recommended.
- Ace17 11y ago
  Interesting. Could you please give an example of one thing he said that was "just false enough to be badly misleading" ? (Not trying to prove you wrong here, just being curious)
  - kragen 11y ago
    Here's a list of errors I found in an article of his about a year ago: https://lobste.rs/c/grmdxi https://lobste.rs/c/grmdxi
    - Ace17 11y ago
      Thanks, but the comment you linked to is just a list of disagreements without explanations (whose author even admits it later by stating that "simple ridicule is both easier to write and more entertaining to read" (!)). I was hoping for something more tangible. Searching wikipedia doesn't support the author's claims about FP ( things like "FP is about higher-order abstraction facilities, not immutability").
      - kragen 11y ago
        Yeah, I didn't bother to explain in depth how things really are, because that would have required an order of magnitude more effort than just listing Bob's absurd nonsense claims, which is adequate for my audience. I'm sorry that Wikipedia isn't sufficiently clear and correct to replace knowing what you're talking about, and I'd fix that if I knew how, but I don't. Teaching difficult ways of thinking, in person, to people who trust and respect you, is already hard enough. Trying to teach them to random people on the internet who think you're quite possibly full of shit and may not even bother reading to the end of what you write, that's an exercise in futility. Forgive me if I don't accept the implied invitation.

afarrell 11y ago

> a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it. Question for other folks here: In your experience, does staying up until 4:00AM tend to lead to you being more or less productive in the long term?

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Less, for a few days, if you do it once. Doing it regularly leads to lower productivity until you quit doing it.
robertelder 11y ago
I've had it go both ways before, but I noticed during university when I was forced to do such things that after you've had a couple weeks to rest, whatever you were working on before becomes crystal clear in a way that it wouldn't have been if you just relaxed and made steady progress. Probably something to do with the stress burns it into your brain.
dave2000 11y ago
More, because I can get 4 more hours done than if I go to bed at midnight and I am more motivated later and far less likely to be disturbed. I can't do it as much these days because I have a day job which gets in the way.
sbov 11y ago
If you've been working on a bug for an hour+ and it's 2AM it usually means it's time to put the keyboard down. For me, what usually happens is I go to sleep, wake up, and have it fixed in 5 minutes.
- stronglikedan 11y ago
  That was the only thing cigarettes were ever good for! Back when I smoked, if I was stuck on something, I would go have a cigarette. Most of the time I would have the answer (or at least a hint) when I came back in. Some say that nicotine temporarily increases brain function, so I just chalked it up to that.

asamarin 11y ago

Some extra suggestions: - Null Program: http://nullprogram.com/index/ http://nullprogram.com/index/ - Insane Coding: http://insanecoding.blogspot.com http://insanecoding.blogspot.com - Agner Fog's Blog: http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog

swah 11y ago

If you're listing V8, might as well add Andy Wingo: wingolog.org

devy 11y ago

I love Gary Bernhardt's writings, screencasts and lightning talks and his sense of humor, especially this one[1]. But unfortunately, some JavaScript developers might feel it offensive. [1] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

Ace17 11y ago
The one you linked is a must-watch!
gjolund 11y ago
I love that video. There is nothing offensive in the video, I think he does a pretty good job explaining how bat shit ridiculous javascript is. If you are writing js professionally and haven't already come to terms with that and the existential crisis it entails... you're gonna have a bad time.
- MIKarlsen 11y ago
  I know I shouldn't be turned off by this, but I so am. And I'm starting to dislike the dev-community more and more for each day I try to learn programming myself. Elitism at its worst. I guess it started a few years back when I started an introductory programming-class at university where I was supposed to learn Java. I had already tried some light-weight languages like HTML and CSS and felt comfortable modding Wordpress-solutions. At the time, I studied a non-tech minor, and worked at an it-consultancy with a bunch of guys roughly my age. We were pretty good friends, but I strongly remember how they ridiculed Java as being old and outdated, and how I was wasting my time trying to learn more than the course expected of me. And it actually turned me off a lot, mainly because I thought these guys knew what they were talking about. About a year ago, I tried my way with python for web-scraping and some light scripting, but ran into the same ridicule by a co-worker where I had my internship. This february I finished my liberal arts'ish IT-master degree, and decided that I needed to learn how to do some code in order to get better at my job, and understanding it and tech in general. This time, I'm focussing on FreeCodeCamp, and I'm dedicated to learn Javascript and front-end development. Because I've realized that there will always be people who trash-talk other languages, and I've learned that no languages are better or worse than others. I just think it's so frustrating asking for advice online when you run into people who fanatically defend one coding-language as "the only one" and trash talk everything else. So fuck the haters - I'm learning Javascript, and it's gonna help me build some super cool apps that will help a lot of people!

dmit 11y ago

Here are some software engineering blogs from my RSS reader in addition to the ones listed in TFA. I honestly don't know how over or underrated they are, but I guess that varies depending on which communities you're closer to. Mikola Lysenko https://0fps.net https://0fps.net Graphics programming, geometry and algorithms. --- Steven Wittens http://acko.net http://acko.net Not underrated in any sense of the word, but I have to include it in case there are people who haven't seen it yet. It's about math and graphics, but also about art and design. Amazingly educational. http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/ http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/ is a good starting point for new readers. --- Mark Nottingham https://www.mnot.net/blog/ https://www.mnot.net/blog/ Networking and HTTP. --- Jeff Preshing http://preshing.com http://preshing.com Efficient concurrent data structures. --- Bruce Dawson https://randomascii.wordpress.com https://randomascii.wordpress.com Software efficiency, performance optimization, fractals and more. --- Yann Collet http://fastcompression.blogspot.com http://fastcompression.blogspot.com Modern compression algorithms. --- Gil Tene http://stuff-gil-says.blogspot.com http://stuff-gil-says.blogspot.com Also definitely not underrated, at least not in the Java world. But any engineer who cares about latency and honest benchmarks will benefit. Low latency techniques, GC performance, lock-free programming. --- Tony Finch http://fanf.livejournal.com http://fanf.livejournal.com C and UNIX programming, and more. --- Andy Wingo https://wingolog.org https://wingolog.org Scheme, Compilers, JavaScript, and much more. --- Aleksey Shipilёv http://shipilev.net http://shipilev.net JDK internals, low-level optimization.

0x54MUR41 11y ago

Some suggestions are here [1]. This is a curated list of engineering blogs from both individual and company contributors. [1]: https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs

williamkennedy 11y ago

I love Scott Hanselman's blog. It's one of those blogs I check in with every so often. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ http://www.hanselman.com/blog/

squeakynick 11y ago
Are we allowed to mention our own blogs? :) http://datagenetics.com/blog.html http://datagenetics.com/blog.html
- williamkennedy 11y ago
  Glad you did. Had a quick look. Found this post quite interesting http://datagenetics.com/blog/march12016/index.html http://datagenetics.com/blog/march12016/index.html
- MaurizioPz 11y ago
  Since you did I might as well. Me and my brother are starting out on our blogging "careers" so I would love to hear your opinions http://codecleane.rs http://codecleane.rs It's about software craftmanship in an enterprise environment
  - williamkennedy 11y ago
    Looks great. Here is a quick tip that I think could really help first-time visitors and of course your own blog. I think you could add an "about" page just to let people know what your site is about. I hope this feedback is useful as is my intention. Since we are on the subject of personal blogs is http://www.new2code.com http://www.new2code.com which aims to help people get their first job in tech. I expand on other themes in the future but right now I want to learn and share as much as I can about getting that first software development job.

hwangmoretime 11y ago

Cool. I just checked if there might be an awesome list[1] on Github for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, they only have one that lists tech companies' engineering blogs: https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs [1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

dclowd9901 11y ago

Might I suggest Mr. Blake Ross' blogs? His post "Mr. Fart's Favorite Colors" is among my favorite blog reads of all time. https://medium.com/@blakeross https://medium.com/@blakeross

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

perrupa 11y ago

I'm not a hundred percent sure if he has a blog, but rich hickey is the speaker/writer who has most consistently blown my mind our shifted the way I think about programming. This is probably the best resource here: https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub I'd recommend starting with "simple made easy" Also, he created Clojure :)

akkartik 11y ago

This post inspired me to give my feeds a public home: http://akkartik.name/feeds.xml http://akkartik.name/feeds.xml. You can see all the ones I stole from OP at the top of the list. Compared to OP's more curated list, many of my subscriptions post only intermittently, but that doesn't bother me. Instead, if a site posts too frequently I might boot it from my subscriptions. RSS is only for sites that I never want to miss a single story from.