J
Justin Duke
jmduke.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2013
Justin Duke, creator of Buttondown, writes on programming, running an independent software business, Django, and Rails.
What HN saysHN commenters link his posts on Django patterns, side projects, and going independent, and one notes his remark that a full-time job might pay more.
28HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
66stories submitted
491story points
3 months agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Use weird tests to capture tacit knowledge2 people · 55 points · first shared 2024 · 9 comments on HN
- 2Notes for a younger programmer2 people · 11 points · first shared 2016 · 3 comments on HN
- 3Two Years as an Independent Technologist2 people · 4 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 4The Luxury of Atypical Success2 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 5Notes on Buttondown.com1 people · 126 points · first shared 2024 · 89 comments on HN
- 6Use Rails1 people · 87 points · first shared 2024 · 84 comments on HN
- 7How to make $800/mo from three lines of code1 people · 68 points · first shared 2013 · 32 comments on HN
- 8How I cut my Webpack bundle size in half1 people · 24 points · first shared 2017 · 3 comments on HN
- 9Django Forever · Applied Cartography1 people · 9 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 10How Big Tech uses GitHub1 people · 9 points · first shared 2013 · 6 comments on HN
- 11Always use an enum for your status field1 people · 6 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 12Prices of App Store Successes1 people · 4 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 13A list of valid and invalid email addresses1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 14Talking to Customers1 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 15Chmod777: simple steps to improve yourself in 20141 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jbarham · 2026-08-06
Yeah, I wondered about that too as normally Django "actions" mean admin actions (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/admin/actions/). But in this case it seems the blog post is referring to this pattern: https://www.jmduke.com/posts/in-praise-of-actions.html (same author)
sarimkx · 2024-08-01
https://jmduke.com/posts/essays/two-years/
Guy running an email SaaS clearly says working full time would make him more money.
tbran · 2020-07-07
While the creator of Buttondown [0] and Spoonbill [1] wasn't trying to get a job, I really like the philosophy he talks about in this post about side projects [2]:
> If you are going to find a project, I encourage you to find something particularly small and particularly durable (which is to say, does not require constant or near-constant attention), so that you give yourself the ability to take a break from the project for weeks or months while it accumulates interest.
*edited for formatting
[0]: https://buttondown.email/
[1]: https://spoonbill.io/
[2]: https://jmduke.com/2020/06/26/atypical-success
jmduke · 2017-07-21
At an accessory level, tooling and ecosystem richness — which I don't really hold against Vue, because it'll definitely get there in time.
At a slightly more existential level, I miss how lightweight React components are: they're literally just functions, which makes breaking them out really frictionless. If I've got a FooWidget and I want to break out the header of the widget out into a new component, it's incredibly trivial to do — as opposed to Vue, which forces you to create a new file for it, register that component in the namespace, etc.
(I wrote about this a little more in depth here: http://jmduke.com/posts/what-vue-needs-next/)