Justin Searls
justin.searls.co · Personal blog · on HN since 2019
Justin Searls, a Ruby and Rails developer, writes about testing, developer tooling, AI assistants, and Xcode.
What HN saysHN links his posts on the RubyGems dispute and his ChatGPT self-doubt prompt, and commenters discuss his Xcode and Swift tooling experience.
24HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
42stories submitted
1.2Kstory points
8 months agolast shared
2019people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Full-Breadth Developers3 people · 16 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 2Why agents are bad pair programmers2 people · 291 points · first shared 2025 · 229 comments on HN
- 3Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco2 people · 157 points · first shared 2025 · 112 comments on HN
- 4Sprinkling self-doubt on ChatGPT2 people · 144 points · first shared 2025 · 98 comments on HN
- 5I made Xcode's tests 60 times faster2 people · 8 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 6Why Playwright is less flaky than Selenium2 people · 5 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 7Calling private methods without losing sleep at night2 people · 5 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 8Why is OpenAI so stingy with ChatGPT web search?2 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Certified Shovelware2 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Drive-By Active Storage Advice2 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 11Running Games on a MacBook Pro with an EGPU1 people · 246 points · first shared 2019 · 151 comments on HN
- 12Connecting a gaming PC to Apple Studio Display1 people · 165 points · first shared 2022 · 309 comments on HN
- 13Distributing your own scripts via Homebrew1 people · 80 points · first shared 2025 · 14 comments on HN
- 14Fuckthis.app – Software products for exasperated people1 people · 39 points · first shared 2024 · 28 comments on HN
- 15Ruby makes advanced CLI options easy1 people · 12 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
craigkerstiens · 2024-07-23
I love when friends do this. It's hard to keep up with people and what they're up to. Publishing and letting people subscribe to me is a great way to share things. A few examples of some friends who are doing this:
Justin Searls (fairly known in Ruby and Rails community) mostly quit a lot of various social channels though publishes on some of them one direction. He started a podcast that wasn't meant to be guests of some specific topic, it's just him updating you on things. What he's working on, what he's learning, random stories, etc. - https://justin.searls.co/casts/
Brandur who I've worked with at a couple of places (Heroku previously, and now Crunchy Data) who writes great technical pieces that often end up here also has more of a personal newsletter. While there are technical pieces in there at times he'll also talk about personal experiences my favorite one is some of the unique experiences hiking the Pacific Trail (https://brandur.org/nanoglyphs/039-trails).
searls · 2026-02-03
This is true of the CLIs that start with `xcode` but not of the CLIs that start with `swift`. As `swift-format` and `swift-test` have come into their own, they're just as reliable as any other language ecosystem. And the difference is indeed staggering. I wrote this guide last summer on extracting all your app's code into a (nonsensically necessary) Swift package dependency simply so you can test it with Swift Testing https://justin.searls.co/posts/i-made-xcodes-tests-60-times-faster/
directionless · 2025-10-06
Given some of the ways Andre Arko gets described (See https://justin.searls.co/posts/why-im-not-rushing-to-take-sides-in-the… for a recent overview) I'm a little wary of what the motivation behind this is.
firesteelrain · 2025-08-29
Take the text and send it to ChatGPT. Then, use this self doubt prompt and you get some alarming results.
https://justin.searls.co/posts/sprinkling-self-doubt-on-chatgpt/
antimatter · 2019-07-02
Anyone know the type of mouse being used in the photo? https://justin.searls.co/uploads/egpu/IMG_4122.jpg