I wrote an article on writing JavaScript in C++ using macros, which was featured on Hacker News and got a VP of Engineering at Facebook to reach out and get me in the interview pipeline as I was still in school. I moved halfway across the world from France to work there and still work there today. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478751
Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
311–320 of 459 posts
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Things" are objectively not more dangerous, in fact quite the opposite.
Overall things are much safer, but contact by scammers online (online scams in general) is much more a thing now than it was then. There was a turning point in the mid-late aughts for me where the level of trustworthiness of random anonymous online contacts took a dive.
Sounds like a sad story. I’m sorry to hear that
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#313There is an extensive network of caves under my city that were used by beer breweries in the 1800's to store beer. They are all but inaccessible, and, at the time, kind of a myth. Most people didn't believe they still existed. I was fascinated by this and I compiled as much information as I could find on my personal website in the early 2000's. One day I received an email, "do you want to go into the caves? I know so…
It's amazing how I'd never heard the word "spelunk" before today, and now in the span of the last few hours, I've heard it multiple times in three different contexts.
First time I heard it in English! Your comment made me want to dig deeper... It looks like it comes from the Latin "spelunca", meaning "cave"
Curiously, in Portuguese we have "espelunca" which is more commonly used as a synonym for a seedy, shady place -- and now I know why!
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#314I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog. In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup. In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup. That in turn led to me learning more abou…
> I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control. Following up on this - any specific reason behind this? I am considering starting a newsletter soon to first gather audience and Substack looks like right solution for this without requiring much technical setup, esp. as a non-tech. Idea is to first start blogging, get into that mindspace, build an audience and then you can move it to…
Email is one of the last remaining things where your audience is directly yours and not part of a walled garden. So newsletters have made a come back.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#315Provided an outlet for some thoughts, mainly.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#316There is an extensive network of caves under my city that were used by beer breweries in the 1800's to store beer. They are all but inaccessible, and, at the time, kind of a myth. Most people didn't believe they still existed. I was fascinated by this and I compiled as much information as I could find on my personal website in the early 2000's. One day I received an email, "do you want to go into the caves? I know so…
Cincinnati?
are there caves there? seems like a road trip is in order
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#3171. Helped me get thoughts out of my head that are churning too much
2. Help me organize thoughts as I try to write them in a way that's helpful for other people
3. Allowed me to drop links into a chat with someone asking questions I've been asked before
4. Functioned as a memory bank when I forget how to do something I've done before
5. Functions as a scrapbook for when I want to reflect on a trip or something
I don't have a cool story about being hired or whatever like other people. I think around 2000 people navigate to the blog a year, mostly to a post going into a great amount of detail about my emacs blog post. The follow up most visited is a post I made about buying a Grand Seiko which is quite bereft so I have no idea why it's so popular, I have way better posts lol.
Kind of feeds my theory that a good way to get people reading / watching is to get a niche and stick in there. Possibly the Grand Seiko post gets so much volume because Grand Seiko's marketing is stupidly bad and seems to be completely dependant on content creators. So making content about them would fill somewhat of a vacuum.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#318Learning and Retention.
I find that I learn best if I learn a subject comprehensively. Taking notes in a mediawiki instance I've kept up for a decade forces me to explain what I've learned, helps with retention, identifying what I still need to learn, and is indexed so I can revisit information I don't use every day without as much pain.
If someone else finds it useful, that's even better ;D.
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#319I started blogging about writing and books and met a lot of other writers through it. I have people to talk to about the subjects I love, people to give feedback on unfinished work, and maybe even people to collaborate with one day. I learned a bunch about writing by exposure to their work as well!
Re: Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?
#320I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog. In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup. In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup. That in turn led to me learning more abou…
Way back when Joel Spolsky was a high-profile blogger in the "starting your own software business" genre, I asked him for advice about my blogging, and he replied "Stop what you're doing and get your blog onto your own domain." I had procrastinated because other platforms made everything so damn easy, and hosting my own blog meant being a part-time web admin. But I took his advice, and set up http://raganwald.com . S…
Your blog is my favorite tech blog! I especially liked the blog series that contained to mock a mockingbird. Thank you for your excellent contact over the years!