6 ms·

Ask HN: What are the best developer/hacker focused blogs?

31 points by BrandonWatson 17y ago

I am sure we all read Coding Horror, Spolsky, Zed and Hanselman, but can this community help me identify some of the other great developer/hacker focused bloggers?

biotech 17y ago
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
- sant0sk1 17y ago
  I just recently started reading that site (thanks to HN). Wow. I've never felt so inadequate as a programmer.
  - hypermatt 17y ago
    Yeah its a great site whenever you feel your ego getting to big, it knocks you down a few points
GeneralMaximus 17y ago
I enjoy DadHacker a lot, partly because I enjoy anecdotes, but mostly because Landon writes extremely well and seems like a nice guy without an agenda (unlike Joel and friends). I also used to read _why's blog from time to time before he vanished. Mostly I just follow HN and proggit. I'm not very big on blogs.
zkz 17y ago
The best blogs for me, are those that are not for the great hacker public, but for smaller audiences. Blogs about mathematics, data mining, computer vision, and so on. Coding Horror, Spolsky and the alike only talk about generalities and aren't really useful to me.
- tgittos 17y ago
  What computer vision blogs do you read?
- PieSquared 17y ago
  Do you mind sharing? :D
- warfangle 17y ago
  Also, datamining blogs? :)
  - sunkencity 17y ago
    http://followthedata.wordpress.com http://followthedata.wordpress.com is one
bretthoerner 17y ago
> I am sure we all read Coding Horror, Spolsky, Zed and Hanselman Not so much.
- ldh 17y ago
  But how do you find out about the latest FogBugz release?!?!
  - gloob 17y ago
    HN seems insistent on keeping me up to date about it. ;)
    - leeskye 17y ago
      Agreed. HN is the best aggregator for hacker/dev content
      - rwolf 17y ago
        The post you replied to appears to be referencing FogBugz specifically.
- ScottWhigham 17y ago
  Clearly a Microsoft person. A quick peek at his profile actually says, "I work at Microsoft. I don't want anyone to be confused on that point." Not that there's anything wrong with that. I do find it funny that he put Zed in that list.
juliusdavies 17y ago
I like Steve Yegge's archive, especially the original "internal amazon blog" (2004-2005): http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/blog-rants http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/blog-rants Planet Apache can be interesting (an aggregator of apache committers). Extreme variation in quality, but James Duncan Davidson and Sam Ruby and a few others make it all worth it: http://planet.apache.org/committers/ http://planet.apache.org/committers/ Anton Chuvakin for security: http://chuvakin.blogspot.com/ http://chuvakin.blogspot.com/
- technomancy 17y ago
  Sam Ruby has his own Planet set up too; I find it to be pretty relevant: http://planet.intertwingly.net http://planet.intertwingly.net
g_ 17y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99426 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99426
tsally 17y ago
I don't have any specific blogs for you at the moment, but go with someone who is smart but unknown. Unknowns have to produce good content to stay afloat. At this point Coding Horror and Spolsky can get away with just about anything because of their success. It's too easy to assume that the big names are correct without critically thinking about their words.
cruise02 17y ago
Currently in my RSS reader: * Coding the Wheel - http://www.codingthewheel.com/ http://www.codingthewheel.com/ * Good Math, Bad Math - http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/ http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/ * Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP - http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ * Polymath Programmer - http://polymathprogrammer.com/ http://polymathprogrammer.com/ * The Endeavor - http://www.johndcook.com/blog/ http://www.johndcook.com/blog/ * Programming Praxis - http://programmingpraxis.com/ http://programmingpraxis.com/ * Pragmatic Bookshelf News - http://www.pragprog.com/news/ http://www.pragprog.com/news/ * Sutter's Mill - http://herbsutter.wordpress.com/ http://herbsutter.wordpress.com/ * Schneier on Security - http://www.schneier.com/blog/ http://www.schneier.com/blog/
- sandGorgon 17y ago
  nice .. thanks
- hairsupply 17y ago
  Second on Coding the Wheel.
peterbraden 17y ago
What I do is use sites like Hacker news to discover other sites - if I like a story, I'll check the rest of the site to see if the author writes consistently good stuff, and if so subscribe. I've found a lot of cool stuff that way.
atlei 17y ago
Misc daily links: - http://www.arjansworld.com http://www.arjansworld.com - http://jasonhaley.com/blog/default.aspx http://jasonhaley.com/blog/default.aspx
tgittos 17y ago
Two I have in my reader: Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP - http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ Igvata - http://www.igvita.com/ http://www.igvita.com/ (Ruby based, sometimes too terse)
jodrellblank 17y ago
Raymond Chen's very Windows focused The Old New Thing - http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/
judofyr 17y ago
http://hackety.org/ http://hackety.org/ … Oh, damn :(
arthurk 17y ago
Information Aesthetics - http://infosthetics.com/ http://infosthetics.com/ The Frontal Cortex - http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/ http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/
keyist 17y ago
Sites I like from my feeds, aiming for variety: * Joseph Miklojcik (emacs, lisp, languages) http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/ http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/ * Mauricio Fernández (functional, with ocaml focus) http://eigenclass.org/R2/ http://eigenclass.org/R2/ * Colin Percival (tarsnap, freebsd security) http://www.daemonology.net/blog/ http://www.daemonology.net/blog/ * Matthew Garrett (mobile linux, power management) http://mjg59.livejournal.com http://mjg59.livejournal.com * Brad Fitzpatrick (memcached, pubhubsubbub) http://advogato.org/person/bradfitz/diary.html http://advogato.org/person/bradfitz/diary.html * Chris Neukirchen's Trivium (all links, great jumping point) http://chneukirchen.org/trivium/ http://chneukirchen.org/trivium/
brianto2010 17y ago
pkrumins has an especially enriching blog http://catonmat.net http://catonmat.net
icey 17y ago
I can't believe raganwald's homoiconic hasn't been mentioned yet: http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master
pfedor 17y ago
http://research.swtch.com/ http://research.swtch.com/
ganley 17y ago
A few of my favorites that I didn't see people list; note that many of these are sort of combined personal blogs and programming-related (like mine - http://joeganley.com http://joeganley.com): - http://wilshipley.com http://wilshipley.com - http://lbrandy.com http://lbrandy.com - http://nedbatchelder.com http://nedbatchelder.com - http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/ http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/

31 points by BrandonWatson 17y ago

I am sure we all read Coding Horror, Spolsky, Zed and Hanselman, but can this community help me identify some of the other great developer/hacker focused bloggers?

biotech 17y ago

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/

sant0sk1 17y ago
I just recently started reading that site (thanks to HN). Wow. I've never felt so inadequate as a programmer.
- hypermatt 17y ago
  Yeah its a great site whenever you feel your ego getting to big, it knocks you down a few points

GeneralMaximus 17y ago

I enjoy DadHacker a lot, partly because I enjoy anecdotes, but mostly because Landon writes extremely well and seems like a nice guy without an agenda (unlike Joel and friends). I also used to read _why's blog from time to time before he vanished. Mostly I just follow HN and proggit. I'm not very big on blogs.

zkz 17y ago

The best blogs for me, are those that are not for the great hacker public, but for smaller audiences. Blogs about mathematics, data mining, computer vision, and so on. Coding Horror, Spolsky and the alike only talk about generalities and aren't really useful to me.

tgittos 17y ago
What computer vision blogs do you read?
PieSquared 17y ago
Do you mind sharing? :D
warfangle 17y ago
Also, datamining blogs? :)
- sunkencity 17y ago
  http://followthedata.wordpress.com http://followthedata.wordpress.com is one

bretthoerner 17y ago

> I am sure we all read Coding Horror, Spolsky, Zed and Hanselman Not so much.

ldh 17y ago
But how do you find out about the latest FogBugz release?!?!
- gloob 17y ago
  HN seems insistent on keeping me up to date about it. ;)
  - leeskye 17y ago
    Agreed. HN is the best aggregator for hacker/dev content
    - rwolf 17y ago
      The post you replied to appears to be referencing FogBugz specifically.
ScottWhigham 17y ago
Clearly a Microsoft person. A quick peek at his profile actually says, "I work at Microsoft. I don't want anyone to be confused on that point." Not that there's anything wrong with that. I do find it funny that he put Zed in that list.

juliusdavies 17y ago

I like Steve Yegge's archive, especially the original "internal amazon blog" (2004-2005): http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/blog-rants http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/blog-rants Planet Apache can be interesting (an aggregator of apache committers). Extreme variation in quality, but James Duncan Davidson and Sam Ruby and a few others make it all worth it: http://planet.apache.org/committers/ http://planet.apache.org/committers/ Anton Chuvakin for security: http://chuvakin.blogspot.com/ http://chuvakin.blogspot.com/

technomancy 17y ago
Sam Ruby has his own Planet set up too; I find it to be pretty relevant: http://planet.intertwingly.net http://planet.intertwingly.net

g_ 17y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99426 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99426

tsally 17y ago

I don't have any specific blogs for you at the moment, but go with someone who is smart but unknown. Unknowns have to produce good content to stay afloat. At this point Coding Horror and Spolsky can get away with just about anything because of their success. It's too easy to assume that the big names are correct without critically thinking about their words.

cruise02 17y ago

Currently in my RSS reader: * Coding the Wheel - http://www.codingthewheel.com/ http://www.codingthewheel.com/ * Good Math, Bad Math - http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/ http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/ * Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP - http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ * Polymath Programmer - http://polymathprogrammer.com/ http://polymathprogrammer.com/ * The Endeavor - http://www.johndcook.com/blog/ http://www.johndcook.com/blog/ * Programming Praxis - http://programmingpraxis.com/ http://programmingpraxis.com/ * Pragmatic Bookshelf News - http://www.pragprog.com/news/ http://www.pragprog.com/news/ * Sutter's Mill - http://herbsutter.wordpress.com/ http://herbsutter.wordpress.com/ * Schneier on Security - http://www.schneier.com/blog/ http://www.schneier.com/blog/

sandGorgon 17y ago
nice .. thanks
hairsupply 17y ago
Second on Coding the Wheel.

peterbraden 17y ago

What I do is use sites like Hacker news to discover other sites - if I like a story, I'll check the rest of the site to see if the author writes consistently good stuff, and if so subscribe. I've found a lot of cool stuff that way.

atlei 17y ago

Misc daily links: - http://www.arjansworld.com http://www.arjansworld.com - http://jasonhaley.com/blog/default.aspx http://jasonhaley.com/blog/default.aspx

tgittos 17y ago

Two I have in my reader: Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP - http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/ Igvata - http://www.igvita.com/ http://www.igvita.com/ (Ruby based, sometimes too terse)

jodrellblank 17y ago

Raymond Chen's very Windows focused The Old New Thing - http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/

judofyr 17y ago

http://hackety.org/ http://hackety.org/ … Oh, damn :(

arthurk 17y ago

Information Aesthetics - http://infosthetics.com/ http://infosthetics.com/ The Frontal Cortex - http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/ http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/

keyist 17y ago

Sites I like from my feeds, aiming for variety: * Joseph Miklojcik (emacs, lisp, languages) http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/ http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/ * Mauricio Fernández (functional, with ocaml focus) http://eigenclass.org/R2/ http://eigenclass.org/R2/ * Colin Percival (tarsnap, freebsd security) http://www.daemonology.net/blog/ http://www.daemonology.net/blog/ * Matthew Garrett (mobile linux, power management) http://mjg59.livejournal.com http://mjg59.livejournal.com * Brad Fitzpatrick (memcached, pubhubsubbub) http://advogato.org/person/bradfitz/diary.html http://advogato.org/person/bradfitz/diary.html * Chris Neukirchen's Trivium (all links, great jumping point) http://chneukirchen.org/trivium/ http://chneukirchen.org/trivium/

brianto2010 17y ago

pkrumins has an especially enriching blog http://catonmat.net http://catonmat.net

icey 17y ago

I can't believe raganwald's homoiconic hasn't been mentioned yet: http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/tree/master

pfedor 17y ago

http://research.swtch.com/ http://research.swtch.com/

ganley 17y ago

A few of my favorites that I didn't see people list; note that many of these are sort of combined personal blogs and programming-related (like mine - http://joeganley.com http://joeganley.com): - http://wilshipley.com http://wilshipley.com - http://lbrandy.com http://lbrandy.com - http://nedbatchelder.com http://nedbatchelder.com - http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/ http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/