Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

octopress.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#51

Post by chriseppstein »

officemonkey wrote: post #15
mhansen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that you can write your blog posts in your favorite coding editor instead of some web form. Some people find that easier - I certainly feel more at home in my editor.

Hell, if you were a real hacker, you would ssh to your server with vim or emacs, write the post in markdown or somesuch, and have your the blosxom-inspired clone you wrote yourself serve up the HTML. The real reason it's "for hackers" is for marketing. That and improving its chances for a front-page mention here.

The real reason it's for hackers is that it uses Git and the command line to manage it. It may not be "hack-ery" enough for you, but it's certainly not software non-hackers are going to use.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#52

Post by flocial »

markkanof wrote: post #48
flocial wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad but true. Octopi can make or break a project. http://thechangelog.com/post/1156862826/octobot-java-scala-r...

All octopus jokes aside, thanks for pointing out The Changelog podcast. I had not heard of this one before and it looks like they cover a lot of great topics.

I found it via GitHub's "Explore" section which is also a gem.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#53

Post by wickedchicken »

pestaa wrote: post #13
ristretto wrote: post #8

Hackers should write code, not blogs.

And that code should be documented, right? A hacker-centric blog could be a good tool for that.

"TCP/IP won because we focused on writing the software, not the documentation" - Vint Cerf [1]

Hackers write code. If you write code and documentation, you're an engineer, good programmer, etc.

Think about what you are you saying when you're "hacking on some code" -- you are intentionally writing code that is bad, but cleverly bad enough to get the job done. "Thoroughly documented hacks" are about as nonsensical as F. Scott Fitzgerald exquisitely writing about how great it feels to take a piss.

[1] While I really want to get this confirmed from the man himself, this is unfortunately sourced from a twitter post and not entirely verifiable at the moment: http://twitter.com/#!/pcalcado/statuses/74071761897005056

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#54

Post by billmcneale »

mhansen wrote: post #5
keenerd wrote: post #2

So what makes it for hackers? The Github backend? Including a plugin for code by default? http://redraftable.com is a blog engine for hackers, other than the author won't release sources while the project is still immature.

The idea is that you can write your blog posts in your favorite coding editor instead of some web form. Some people find that easier - I certainly feel more at home in my editor.

> The idea is that you can write your blog posts in your favorite coding editor instead of some web form.

What's so hard about using your own editor and when you're done, pasting your text in the web form?

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#55

Post by xinsight »

billmcneale wrote: post #54
mhansen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that you can write your blog posts in your favorite coding editor instead of some web form. Some people find that easier - I certainly feel more at home in my editor.

> The idea is that you can write your blog posts in your favorite coding editor instead of some web form. What's so hard about using your own editor and when you're done, pasting your text in the web form?

That's how I always used Wordpress, but it's not exactly elegant. You always have to make little edits in a small textarea box. No syntax highlighting. Need to submit the entire article to save (instead of command-s). You lose your cursor position when you save (super-annoying with longer posts). Wordpress doesn't support markdown natively. etc.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#57

Post by alecbenzer »

This looks nice. :) Haven't had a chance to try it yet, but it looks very promising. I very recently built a jekyll blog, and while playing around with the CSS was fun and educational, my blog seems kind of shabby in comparison with wordpress blogs and the like, and I don't know if I'd be able to get my design skills up to the point where I'd be able to make my blog look that good.

The most surprising thing and biggest issue I can see right now is that there's "a" theme - I was expecting several. But I imagine that there will eventually be support for more (user-contributed) themes. I also like the syntax highlighting (I think pygments looks kind of ugly), although I'd also like to see more support for customizing the highlight appearance, like maybe removing the background.

Re: Octopress - A blogging framework for hackers

#58

Post by drdaeman »

wickedchicken wrote: post #53
pestaa wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that code should be documented, right? A hacker-centric blog could be a good tool for that.

"TCP/IP won because we focused on writing the software, not the documentation" - Vint Cerf [1] Hackers write code. If you write code and documentation, you're an engineer, good programmer, etc. Think about what you are you saying when you're "hacking on some code" -- you are intentionally writing code that is bad, but cleverly bad enough to get the job done. "Thoroughly documented hacks" are about as nonsensical as F…

I believe he meant that IP won over, say, X.25 because OSI stack was overcomplicated. In a same way SMTP (67-page RFC) won over X.400 (a huge book).

Hackers think, write code and then they may consider to document something about it. This is in contrast to engineers, who think, document then implement things.

Post reply on HN