11 ms·
Ask HN: What are some great personal blogs/portfolios?
I've been considering creating a personal website where I can post software projects I've done and write blog posts about them. I've found a couple inspirational engineers that produce a lot of interesting projects and content on their personal pages, but I'm sure there's a ton of people who have great blogs that I've never heard of.
Who are some of your favorites?
- deepaksurti 8y agohttps://www.michaelfogleman.com https://www.michaelfogleman.com discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14445587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14445587
- amrshafik 8y agoThis portfolio showcase page doesn't contain software project blog posts per se but has a lot of solid designer portfolio examples that might be interesting to check out: https://www.semplice.com/showcase https://www.semplice.com/showcase
- otras 8y agoHighly recommend patio11's site and blog: https://www.kalzumeus.com/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/ His post on salary negotiation should be mandatory reading for all software engineers: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
- deepGem 8y agoI had missed this gem of a post. "Put in $1 then to get the ball rolling, and we’ll circle back to this later.” - How could I have not said something simple like this in my previous negotiations :) Baller of a post.
- WestCoastJustin 8y agoNot only his site, but his comment history is also a gold mine too. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11 He has helped countless people by giving great advice. I'd really suggest reading his "You Can Probably Stand To Charge More" posts. This should be essential reading for any contractors. This personally helped me double my income. Read here: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/08/14/you-can-probably-stand-to-charge-more/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/08/14/you-can-probably-stand-..., https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/, and https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1 https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
- patio11 8y agoThanks, that made my morning!
- WestCoastJustin 8y agoHonestly, thank you! Just checked my email. I chatted with you all the way back on Oct 17-22, 2014!
- alekseypo 8y agoGreat post, thanks!
- hprotagonist 8y agoi’ve been looking to rediscover a particular tech blog for a while. It’s formatted to look like it was written in LaTeX. i think it’s even two-column but i can’t recall. unrelatedly, eric lippert always has fun stuff. “Wizards and Warriors” a five part series was a revelation: https://ericlippert.com/2015/04/27/wizards-and-warriors-part-one/ https://ericlippert.com/2015/04/27/wizards-and-warriors-part...
- bluetidepro 8y agoDo a quick search here on Designer News: https://www.designernews.co/ https://www.designernews.co/ (it’s like HN but more design focused). They have hundreds of posts of amazing portfolios and personal sites. You’ll get a ton of inspiration there.
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- barrowclift 8y agoIf self-promotion is allowed in this context, I'd like to suggest my own website as a good example: https://barrowclift.me https://barrowclift.me
- reacweb 8y agoI love it. My minimalistic blog is build using pandoc. Would it bother you if I plagiarized your blog styles.
- bemmu 8y agoDerek Sivers has a great blog: https://sivers.org/blog https://sivers.org/blog
- taprun 8y agoI run a site focused on a very narrow niche (pricing strategy)... https://taprun.com https://taprun.com
- ctnb 8y agoJulia Evans' blog is one of my favorites: https://jvns.ca/ https://jvns.ca/
- josephmosby 8y agoSeconded. Julia's blog looks nice, has great explanations, and did a LOT for me as a junior developer about feeling confident in all the things that I didn't know at the time but was excited to learn.
- alexanderdmitri 8y agoawesome to see she makes programming zines too
- yuy910616 8y agodan wang. he wrote why so few people major in CS. interesting dude. https://danwang.co/ https://danwang.co/ bill gurley, investor http://abovethecrowd.com/ http://abovethecrowd.com/
- wenc 8y agoI discovered Dan Wang through Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution Blog (a great blog for folks with omnivorous interests). Dan seems to be a deep thinker (philosophy major). He doesn't write about engineering so much, but what he does write about he goes deep.
- yuy910616 8y agothat's exactly how I found him... Did you major in Econ or something?
- wenc 8y agoNot really. I have no econ background at all but I still find Tyler's blog interesting.
- yuy910616 8y agoThat's great to hear! I always thought only econ people read that blog. Did you find stratechery through MR yet? If not...Ben Thompson is worth a read for sure.
- wenc 8y agoI've known about Stratechery for some time. I understand the content is very good, but my interests aren't quite in that space.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoIt's finished, but the prog21 archives have some real gems: https://prog21.dadgum.com https://prog21.dadgum.com I also recently read through Eevee's blog and greatly enjoyed it: https://eev.ee https://eev.ee
- JunaidBhai 8y agoDesign-oriented: http://draftss.com/portfolio http://draftss.com/portfolio
- ArtWomb 8y agoThe OG https://joshuadavis.com/ https://joshuadavis.com/ Not engineering, but poetry. Circa 2004. I thought it was so novel back in the day. Maintain a site just to self publish ;) https://web.archive.org/web/20050324004506/http://geegaw.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050324004506/http://geegaw.com...
- strittmatter 8y agoI've always been fond of https://gmunk.com/ https://gmunk.com/
- brimtown 8y agoDan Abramov's is very good: https://overreacted.io/ https://overreacted.io/
- arethuza 8y agoFabrice Bellard: https://bellard.org/ https://bellard.org/ For non-software projects: Tatjana J. van Vark http://tatjavanvark.nl/projects.html http://tatjavanvark.nl/projects.html
- trulyrandom 8y agoI really enjoy Drew DeVault's blog: https://drewdevault.com https://drewdevault.com
- valleyjo 8y agoThis one is from my coworker. One of the best engineers I have ever worked with. It amazes me how they can be so productive at work and be so prolific with this blog. It goes back a log time. http://writeasync.net http://writeasync.net
- tpaschalis 8y agoDan Luu is really great. [1]. He also has a "list of programming blogs" which lead me to find even more interesting ones [2]. [1] https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/ [2] https://danluu.com/programming-blogs/ https://danluu.com/programming-blogs/
- daleco 8y agoI'm on the same boat, here are some UX Designers portfolios that I found interesting and bookmarked. Even if it's a different profession, you may find inspiration there: http://jaredgranger.com/ http://jaredgranger.com/ https://danielkorpai.com/#work https://danielkorpai.com/#work https://katiemacoy.com https://katiemacoy.com https://www.vanschneider.com https://www.vanschneider.com https://heyshawn.co https://heyshawn.co
- skilled 8y agoI burst out laughing while reflecting on how good the Tobias van Schneider design is. The use of typography is absolutely marvelous. Thanks for sharing!
- phosfox 8y agoI don't know if his site is getting a hug of death but it took almost 50sec (16sec DOMContentLoaded) to be completely finished loading. It's a beautiful site though.
- flaviocopes 8y agoThe page design is absolutely amazing, although its weight is 33MB. Which makes me think, where do we draw the line in terms of web page size? What's acceptable as of 2019? Also considering mobile?
- rchaud 8y ago> Which makes me think, where do we draw the line in terms of web page size? We look at the business case. TVS' website would be a disaster if it was targeted at the general public, with millions of hits each day. But it's not. His work on Spotify however does have to be optimized for that audience. His personal site however can be whatever. It's showcased on industry sites like awwwards.com and the like, and those sites are all form, no function. In this environment, Pretty = useful, because it makes his work more noticeable, which is good for getting consulting work.
- cblades 8y agoJeff Atwood's blog is great and still (very infrequently) updated. https://blog.codinghorror.com https://blog.codinghorror.com
- Jhndb 8y agoI found this quite fun, not sure if it still works. http://blog.soulshake.net/2016/04/command-line-resume/ http://blog.soulshake.net/2016/04/command-line-resume/
- jefflombardjr 8y agoAt the risk of sounding pompous. I really like my portfolio site: https://jefflombard.com/ https://jefflombard.com/. Why? I built it for myself. Not for what I thought recruiters/employers wanted to see. I simply wanted a place to collect some of the projects I work on. And more importantly one that captured my personality a bit. It's not perfect, I look at it and see a ton things I'd refactor. But it get's people to laugh or start a conversation about something I've done. That to me makes it all worth it. My $0.02: Don't build a portfolio site because you think you need one, build one if it serves a purpose for you. i.e. learning a new skill, organizing your work, or just having fun. I think the results are much more interesting that way. (Also, don't be afraid to iterate. I think this is the 5th one I've attempted to make)
- codesternews 8y agoBro it's so amazing and unexpected. Great work and creativity.
- jefflombardjr 8y agoThank you for this. Made my day :)
- eppsilon 8y agoI like the "hello" button. :) The font weight of the body text is almost painfully light though.
- mrspeaker 8y ago"I'm a javascript developer. What did you expect to see here without Javascript enabled?". Instant whitelist!
- theandrewbailey 8y agoI got a completely blank page running Firefox + uMatrix with no scripts running.
- iancmceachern 8y agoI'm going to go the other way with my comment and ask for feedback on my portfolio page. https://www.iancollmceachern.com https://www.iancollmceachern.com Please feel free to email feedback to the contact info on my page or post it here. Thank you in advance. (Edited to add that I'm a hardware product designer, providing mechanical and systems engineering services for medical devices and other mission critical hardware)
- stingrae 8y agoHere were my first impressions: - It is very gray. The blog looks much better with it's white space. - I don't get what the shopping cart is for. - The header isn't centered. - The font is very heavy feeling. - I like the contact page. I feel like that should be your main page, with the side bar links moved to be across the top of the page. I'd also like to get feedback on my personal website: https://raemond.com https://raemond.com
- tekknolagi 8y agoIf you're interested in PL and blogging, mine night be of use to you. https://bernsteinbear.com https://bernsteinbear.com
- zawerf 8y agoProbably one of the most unique designs for a personal blog I have ever seen (the animated page headers, page transitions, and a lot of genuinely great articles and talks): https://acko.net https://acko.net
- yakshaving_jgt 8y agoWittens' posts on culture in tech and the rise of postmodernism are especially important. Storms and Teacups is excellent, and I'm pleased to see he has a more recent one too. http://acko.net/blog/storms-and-teacups/ http://acko.net/blog/storms-and-teacups/ http://acko.net/blog/falling-into-faith/ http://acko.net/blog/falling-into-faith/
- oysterfish 8y agohttp://stevelosh.com/ http://stevelosh.com/
- hsrada 8y agoMy favorite is http://worrydream.com/ http://worrydream.com/ Here's a twitter thread containing some 'quirky' personal websites, not quite portfolios though. https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1002674795031326720 https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/10026747950313267...
- seddin 8y agohttps://flaviocopes.com/ https://flaviocopes.com/ should be here too
- flaviocopes 8y agoThank you for the mention!
- The_Hoff 8y agohttps://blog.jessfraz.com/ https://blog.jessfraz.com/ is my favorite depiction of pure passion for software. Deep dives, home hacking, intros to topics… Jess is great
- mdolon 8y agoI'm a fan of Patrick Collison's blog: https://patrickcollison.com/ https://patrickcollison.com/ And I use my personal site (https://www.mdolon.com/ https://www.mdolon.com/) for sharing projects and writing, the design is based on a free Jekyll theme that I've customized. You're welcome to build on it if you'd like: https://github.com/mdolon/mdolon.github.io/ https://github.com/mdolon/mdolon.github.io/
- h0p3 8y agohttps://philosopher.life/ https://philosopher.life/ I'm uploading my mind into my wiki, and so, of course, I like my wiki in general.
- cyanoacry 8y agoI highly recommend Nayuki's site: https://www.nayuki.io/ https://www.nayuki.io/ Lots of content (made mostly for themselves), but the writing style is pretty nice and there's a large variety of projects.
- gammarays_ 8y agoI really like http://hergert.me/ http://hergert.me/
- xena 8y agoSelf-promotion: https://christine.website https://christine.website powered by https://github.com/Xe/site https://github.com/Xe/site
- kickscondor 8y agoLooks great. Super solid palette. I like the raw markdown colored. Keep writing - you're doing good.
- navchatterji 8y agoI built my personal website using Google Docs. https://navchatterji.com/ https://navchatterji.com/. This was a fun weekend experiment where the aim was to build a quick, usable website (in this case a blog) and host it without having to type in a single line of HTML/CSS or terminal command. The instructions on how I made it is near the bottom.
- hollaur 8y agoHere's some of my favorites, pulled from this list of 12: https://www.thevectorimpact.com/personal-brand-examples/ https://www.thevectorimpact.com/personal-brand-examples/ - https://jackmcdade.com/ https://jackmcdade.com/ - http://rog.ie/ http://rog.ie/ - http://sarahcpr.com/ http://sarahcpr.com/ - http://laurenholliday.com http://laurenholliday.com (Mine)
- badatshipping 8y agoSlate Star Codex: https://slatestarcodex.com/ https://slatestarcodex.com/ Martin Shkreli: http://martinshkreli.com/ http://martinshkreli.com/ Casey Muratori: https://caseymuratori.com/ https://caseymuratori.com/
- beliu 8y agoI am a fan of https://dave.cheney.net/ https://dave.cheney.net/
- perfect_wave 8y agoI've been following Robert Heaton's blog for a while: https://robertheaton.com/ https://robertheaton.com/
- Hmahal 8y agoHey personally love this one. It is colourful and expresses my skills and experience in an Amazon way https://uicard.io/products/hugo-uilite/ https://uicard.io/products/hugo-uilite/
- yantrams 8y agoHere are some relatively lesser known blogs that I can recommend, apart from the usual suspects (worrydream, John Baez etc.) https://jeremykun.com https://jeremykun.com http://colah.github.io http://colah.github.io https://mathwithbaddrawings.com https://mathwithbaddrawings.com https://www.allendowney.com/blog/ https://www.allendowney.com/blog/ And yeah I finally decided to inject some character into my personal website and spent a couple of days wrangling with css and made this --- http://linkdot.link http://linkdot.link . Not much content really though and it is mostly probability puzzles that I solve every now and then. Edit: Formatting
- kickscondor 8y agoLove your site - ty for sharing.
- Abfrage 8y agoHey, just went on your site with firefox and the content was outside the screen. After digging into it a bit I found that you use "transform: scale(1.3)" on the body. It seems like firefox is positioning the element with its original dimensions and then scales the element. "transform-origin: 0 0" fixed it for me.
- yantrams 8y agoThanks a ton for letting me know about it and sharing the fix as well. Fixed it now. Will spend sometime soon and sort the other Firefox issues that I discovered as well. Cheers!
- azevedol 8y agohttps://www.lucasazevedo.com https://www.lucasazevedo.com
- uxisnotui 8y agoAsk and ye shall receive...self promos! My blog is a smattering of personal development and increasingly more about content strategy as I try to find a niche. https://www.ozchen.com/fuck-balance/ https://www.ozchen.com/fuck-balance/ https://www.ozchen.com/hanlons-razor/ https://www.ozchen.com/hanlons-razor/ https://www.ozchen.com/what-is-content-strategy-definition/ https://www.ozchen.com/what-is-content-strategy-definition/ To my own surprise, it was through writing that I landed gigs in UX, UI and content strategy, and now parlayed into a full time content strategy job.
- osamagirl69 8y agoSome interesting hardware sites I have come across. No nonsense, interesting content, etc http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/ http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/ http://omeganaught.com/ http://omeganaught.com/ http://krazerlasers.com/ http://krazerlasers.com/ http://www.etotheipiplusone.net/ http://www.etotheipiplusone.net/
- seanwilson 8y agoI revamped my portfolio/freelance page recently if anyone wants to borrow any ideas from it or has any feedback: https://www.seanw.org/ https://www.seanw.org/ I tried to get all the important details on a single page and isolate the tech jargon to appeal to non-technical clients. I personally found and had non-technical friends agree with me that a lot of developer portfolios focused too much on the tech (e.g. "I'm a Node developer who loves React!") or go into too much detail about project specifics so I tried to avoid that.
- danieltorre 8y agoThis looks great. You're spot on with the feedback you've received about technical jargon and I think you've struck a great balance. I like the single page and I think the content fits nicely. But, I'd be lost with more content on a single page—in terms of navigation and keeping a mental model of what I've seen.
- scott113341 8y agohttps://brandur.org/articles https://brandur.org/articles Very clear technical writing, mostly about web technologies.
- ar_lan 8y agoI've long used his site as an inspiration as well. It's just pretty clean and interesting.
- felipetavares 8y agohttp://ctrl-c.club/~philips/ http://ctrl-c.club/~philips/ https://felipetavares.com https://felipetavares.com
- kickscondor 8y agoOh man - love the bullshit stories section! Great stuff.
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- xparadigm 8y agoWhooa did you see this guy's website: http://sakibccr.com/ http://sakibccr.com/ This is awesome! (Just kidding. It doesn't contain anything yet.) But this is a really nice website: https://mango.pdf.zone/ https://mango.pdf.zone/ Especially this post: https://mango.pdf.zone/operation-luigi-how-i-hacked-my-friend-without-her-noticing https://mango.pdf.zone/operation-luigi-how-i-hacked-my-frien...
- cuphalfempty 8y agohttp://www.socialhacker.com http://www.socialhacker.com
- _mrmnmly 8y agoFollowing @jefflombardjr example, I would like to share an example of my personal website: https://lukaszkups.net https://lukaszkups.net . Why do I like it? Because I've literally built it by myself from scratch - starting on design (all the graphics, even the map in experience tab) to the static site generation tool that I use to manage content (will release it soon as my first truly open source project). Btw. Any feedback will be highly appreciated.
- bobbydreamer 8y agoLike the multicolored texts in the homepage. Good Colors choice. I like bright Colors but if you are going to be seeing it a lot better to go with Colors that doesn't spoil the eyes and page designs get darker over time.
- vankessel 8y agoShameless self promotion https://vankessel.io https://vankessel.io Still have work to do on it, but I would love to hear feedback.
- jamietanna 8y agoI'll also post my own site, which I do a lot of personal technical blogging on - https://www.jvt.me https://www.jvt.me
- bobbydreamer 8y agoNice.
- justmyfreak 8y agohttps://justmyfreak.com https://justmyfreak.com My own website. I use medium as it is easy write on. Also, I don't need to hustle with template, UI, etc. Pardon me since I didn't update the content for like 2 years.
- spiralganglion 8y agoI'll throw my hat into the ring: http://ivanish.ca http://ivanish.ca What makes my site interesting is that.. I work in web dev and graphics, so I got to have some fun combining the two for my portfolio. I'd love to see more programmers taking advantage of web technologies to make their portfolios more visually interesting, and playful. As much as Flash caused headaches and was a thorn in the side of the open web, there sure were a lot more interesting portfolio sites in the Flash days than there are now. Thanks for creating this fun thread!
- kickscondor 8y agoI'm going through these and reviewing some here: https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/ https://www.kickscondor.com/hrefhunt/. Love it when these threads come up. Keep posting - even if this post is days old, I'll look at all of it.
- larrywright 8y agoGreat Ask HN. I plan on looking through all the links here for ideas. I just restarted my blog after a few years away: http://larrywright.me http://larrywright.me - feedback appreciated.
- mandeepj 8y agosharing my blog - http://mandeepjanjua.com http://mandeepjanjua.com I like to blog about as many things as you come across in life. Because why not? We just don't do only programming
- nabeards 8y agomatthewrayfield.com is one of my faves. Old-school web with fun tech.
- mhdhn 8y agoscripting.com by Dave Winer, who pioneered web logs, podcasts, outlining, RSS, et al
- mrstefan 8y agoI recommend Sam Altman's blog. Especially his post about productivity: http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity Everytime I want to do something meaningful, I think about Sam Altman and I feel inspired.
- saddington 8y agoI've been blogging about my life as a software engineer, dad, husband, entrepreneur, and now (new!) youtube vlogger for a long time. blogging 18 years, actually: http://john.do/ http://john.do/ my hope is to simply share what i'm working on and share how those things are actually working.
- diessica 8y agoNot really great but in a hope someone might think it is, this is one is mine: https://diessi.ca https://diessi.ca Built it myself, I am a Front-end Developer anyway. Began writing about programming but honestly now I just write about whatever I want. Last post was about my sensory depravation experience so I expect anything.