R
rc3.org
rc3.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Rafe Colburn, an engineer who worked at Etsy, writes about software engineering teams, management, tools, and Unix command-line topics.
What HN saysCommenters cite his Perl versus sed and awk benchmark post, his Vim grammar post, and his guideline on whether managers should code.
37HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
45stories submitted
431story points
4 years agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Surprisingly, Perl outperforms sed and Awk3 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 2The Grammar of Vim2 people · 125 points · first shared 2012 · 37 comments on HN
- 3Extreme agility (with more on GitHub process by rtomayko)2 people · 35 points · first shared 2010 · 3 comments on HN
- 4Don’t get stuck: Continuous Deployment2 people · 8 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 5Signs of dysfunctional engineering teams2 people · 4 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 6The challenge of developing a capability2 people · 3 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 7Hate Driven Development1 people · 41 points · first shared 2009 · 6 comments on HN
- 8Blizzard continues to innovate on the security front1 people · 39 points · first shared 2010 · 24 comments on HN
- 9The opportunity cost of a broad skillset1 people · 30 points · first shared 2011 · 18 comments on HN
- 10Classifying Software Developers1 people · 25 points · first shared 2011 · 3 comments on HN
- 11Is this really why people are returning to java??1 people · 13 points · first shared 2011 · 1 comments on HN
- 12How simple features become complicated1 people · 12 points · first shared 2009 · 4 comments on HN
- 13Why are Apple laptops becoming harder to take apart?1 people · 12 points · first shared 2012 · 33 comments on HN
- 14Why is MySQL more popular than PostgreSQL?1 people · 12 points · first shared 2009 · 35 comments on HN
- 15Why do good people build bad applications? (RE: $200,000 OSHA app)1 people · 8 points · first shared 2011 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
roughfalls · 2022-09-26
I'm reminded of a blog post (https://rc3.org/2015/12/29/answering-the-question-should-managers-code… , focused on software engineering managers rather than CTOs), which posited this guideline:
"A manager actively avoids creating situations where their coding is necessary for the success of the project."
I agree with Aditya's article. A CTO must be technical for all the reasons stated. I would add another reason to his list: a CTO must be able to challenge the assumptions, plans, and estimates presented to him/her by the engineering team. Doing so requires technical acumen.
shpeedy · 2020-01-21
Perl is much faster[0], with much more features, with bunch of ready to use libraries, with package manager (CPAN), and similar syntax to awk.
Why you use awk?
[0]: http://rc3.org/2014/08/28/surprisingly-perl-outperforms-sed-and-awk/
Techonomicon · 2018-12-02
vim is a grammar, a true grammar, once you learn that, it all makes sense.
http://rc3.org/2012/05/12/the-grammar-of-vim/
ianso · 2015-02-21
Apposite: "Don't Pile On" - http://rc3.org/2015/02/14/dont-pile-on/
ronjouch · 2015-01-08
Rafe Colburn from Etsy wrote about this performance oddity:
http://rc3.org/2014/08/28/surprisingly-perl-outperforms-sed-and-awk/
EDIT to manage expectations: the article doesn't explain why, it just provides benchmarks and one commenter made a suggestion about character handling. More insight still welcome :)
ilaksh · 2013-08-01
This reminds me of a recent discussion where someone mentioned tools over process. (http://rc3.org/2013/07/29/seven-signs-of-dysfunctional-engineering-tea…
I would say that the 'law' is just subjective manual process, and we desperately need more tools for every-day judgement and decision making.
For example, if there were a computer system that logged all corporate financial transactions including income, then we could automatically tax large corporations, rather than waiting for them to report income through loopholes.
cmwelsh · 2012-10-02
You can sign your messages using HMAC[1]. That's what Facebook does when it makes HTTP requests to your application.
[1] http://rc3.org/2011/12/02/using-hmac-to-authenticate-web-service-reque…