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Ask HN: What are the most inspirational blog posts you've ever read?

by fromdoon on 1/19/14, 9:17 AM with 58 comments

• by stiff on 1/19/14, 11:57 AM

  Mostly not blog posts, but for the last years I tend to revisit the same resources over and over again for inspiration:

  - "You and your research" by Hamming, and his video lectures which expand on topics in the original talk:

  http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30

  - "On teaching mathematics" by V. I. Arnold:

  http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html

  - "Undergraduation" by Paul Graham

  http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html

  - "Learn and relearn your field", and many others in the same category, by Terrence Tao

  http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/learn-and-relear...

  - Steve Jobs Stanford commencement address:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

  - All articles on programming by Peter Norvig:

  http://www.norvig.com/

• by smoyer on 1/19/14, 1:05 PM

  It's not a blog post, but I think Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" is perhaps the most inspirational "thing" I've found on the Internet:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

• by christiangenco on 1/19/14, 10:59 AM

  Mr. Money Mustache's account of how he retired at age 30: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...

• by JoshTriplett on 1/19/14, 6:23 PM

  "I won't be able to answer all your questions. Rather, I can show you how to be lost productively, and how to become comfortable not knowing things and teaching yourself." -- David Humphrey, Mozilla developer, http://vocamus.net/dave/?p=60

  It's one of the most valuable skills you'll need to excel in a technical field, and when mentoring others its one of the most critical skills to impart.

• by tbirdz on 1/19/14, 10:32 AM

  Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years by Peter Norvig: http://norvig.com/21-days.html

• by Red_Tarsius on 1/19/14, 8:00 PM

  Kejia Zhu (http://kzhu.net/does-life-end-at-35.html) helped me to get through the delusional obsession for quick success. I gave it to read to all my friends and it's definitely a must for all HN folks.

  The good ol' Raymond's How to Become a Hacker (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html) will teach you the Hacker attitude, which you can apply to anything. It doesn't matter whether you're a programmer or not, either way you'll benefit from it.

  "1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.

  2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.

  3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.

  4. Freedom is good.

  5. Attitude is no substitute for competence."

  A Handyman’s Toolbox (http://ninjasandrobots.com/a-handymans-toolbox) taught me not to always chase the hot new tech and be confident in my skills. It may be common sense, but it's also well written and straight to the point.

  Lastly, the following posts are all about traveling and/or alternative lifestyles. They show different POVs, but are all equally inspirational.

  - http://alexwarren.co.uk/2013/06/27/how-i-live-and-how-i-work...

  - http://jake-jorgovan.com/blog/remote

  - https://medium.com/better-humans/6620882dde89

  - http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/how-to-travel-around-the-world-fo...

• by brudgers on 1/19/14, 2:39 PM

  I Assume I am Below Average

  Derek Sivers: http://sivers.org/below-average

• by manojlds on 1/19/14, 11:13 AM

  How to be more Productive, by Aaron Swartz - http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity

• by merrua on 1/20/14, 11:08 AM

  http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/0... http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/0... http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/0... http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/01/share-learn/

• by Sandman on 1/19/14, 12:33 PM

  Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice

  http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

• by namzo on 1/19/14, 3:24 PM

  Something small, every day. https://medium.com/think-different-think-stupid/c6ce326612c8

• by callum85 on 1/19/14, 11:13 AM

  Thoreau 2.0 https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm

• by evolve2k on 1/19/14, 12:54 PM

  "POOR, POOR CHILD. YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Programming is Hard" http://writing.bryanwoods4e.com/1-poor-poor-child

  A brilliant article which lets you know that coding is hard cause it's hard not cause you are stupid and that something can be hard and fun at the same time.

  I share this with every new coder I help out.

• by ek on 1/19/14, 3:47 PM

  Microcosmographia Academica http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/iau/cornford/cornford....

  It's not quite a blog post, but it's as close as one might have come in 1908.

  I also like a whole host of articles from Matt Might's blog. I think my favorites are

  12 resolutions for grad students

  http://matt.might.net/articles/grad-student-resolutions/

  and Responding to peer review

  http://matt.might.net/articles/peer-review-rebuttals/

  One last essay that I have enjoyed, also too old to be a blog post, is W.M. Turski's "I was a computer". It's here on Elsevier but fortunately it looks to be open access.

  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0167642395...

• by mindcrime on 1/19/14, 5:19 PM

  pg's How Not To Die essay:

  http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html

  pmarca's The Only Thing That Matters post:

  http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

  Pretty much everything Steve Blank has written on Customer Development:

  http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/

  Mark Cuban on How To Get Rich:

  http://blogmaverick.com/2008/10/04/how-to-get-rich/

  Mark Cuban on Success & Motivation:

  http://blogmaverick.com/2007/12/24/success-and-motivation/

  Jamie Zawinski's Groupware Bad post:

  http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

• by rsoto on 1/19/14, 6:13 PM

  A few of them:

  - Blueberry pancakes and battleships → http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/05/blueberry-pa...

  - This Is All Your App Is: a Collection of Tiny Details → http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/this-is-all-your-ap...

  - The Personality Layer → http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/18/the-personal...

  - Asking Questions beats Giving Advice → http://insideintercom.io/asking-questions-versus-giving-advi...

• by raldi on 1/19/14, 11:58 AM

  A Tale of Two Bridges: http://hintjens.com/blog:16

• by ilamparithi on 1/19/14, 5:02 PM

  Almost all of Paul Graham's essays. Especially

  How to Make Wealth - http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html How to Do What You Love - http://paulgraham.com/love.html Inequality and Risk - http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html

  and Paul Buchheit's

  My startup path - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.in/2007/03/my-startup-path.html (I have actually printed a hard copy of this and have it my wallet. This is what finally convinced me to join a startup.)

• by Morendil on 1/19/14, 11:03 AM

  But Y would I want to do a thing like this? http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/02/but-y-would-i-want-to-do...

• by tinger54 on 1/19/14, 4:14 PM

  McKenna said a lot of kooky stuff but this one really speaks to me.

  http://zenpencils.com/comic/120-terence-mckenna-nature-loves...

• by bennesvig on 1/19/14, 6:23 PM

  - What Would You Do? http://thestoryoftelling.com/what-would-you-do/

  - Reject the tyranny of being picked http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/03/reject-the-t...

  - The World's Worst Boss http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/12/the-worlds-w...

• by nashequilibrium on 1/19/14, 11:35 AM

  http://www.chrissiewellington.org/blog/taking-the-plunge/ Because i didn't know what was to come next and whether she would be successful. A snippet from the first blogpost:

  "Could I be as good as them, if not better? Had I fulfilled my potential, or did I have more to give? Had I pushed my mind and body to the limit? If not, what were those limits? What stars was I capable of grabbing? Without giving it a shot I would never know. I never want to look back and say ‘what if’."

• by narenrulz on 1/19/14, 1:04 PM

  Ang Lee and the uncertainty of success

  http://jeffjlin.com/2013/02/23/ang-lee-and-the-uncertainty-o...

• by nick_urban on 1/24/14, 9:28 PM

  A transcript of the brilliant speech by Heinz von Foerster titled "Ethics and Second Order Cybernetics". When I read this I found it truly amazing, because it effortlessly connected the existential questions I was facing with the formalism of mathematics and the insight of the humanities, all tied into a beautiful circle.

  http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html

• by marsay on 1/19/14, 2:41 PM

  Miyamoto Musashi 21 rules to live your life: http://www.1000manifestos.com/miyamoto-musahi-21-rules-to-li...

  Obstacle is the way: http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2013/11/26/the-obsta...

• by guiambros on 1/19/14, 3:48 PM

  "Lessons from Habitat" [1], by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer.

  Not inspirational in the strict sense, but it's amazing to see a paper written more than 20 years ago and still with so many applicable insights in terms of psychology in gaming and virtual worlds. I keep going back and re-reading every couple of years.

  [1] http://www.crockford.com/ec/lessons.html

• by deependersingla on 1/19/14, 1:10 PM

  Its about story of YC incubated startup Zerocater founder, everytime I read this it makes me more stronger to work more hard. http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/06/how-i-started-zerocater/

• by nader on 1/19/14, 12:19 PM

  "Don't half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing", i.e. "Kill early and often, keeping it alive is not good enough":

  http://bondero.com/kill-early-and-often-startup-methodology

• by 3stripe on 1/19/14, 12:40 PM

  How to be the luckiest guy in the planet, in 4 easy steps

  http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/02/how-to-be-the-luckiest-...

• by zackboe on 1/21/14, 12:49 AM

  "how to blog about code and give zero fucks" by Garann Means

  http://www.garann.com/dev/2013/how-to-blog-about-code-and-gi...

• by giis on 1/19/14, 2:53 PM

  Gustavo Duarte : Lucky to be a Programmer http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/lucky-to-be-a-programme...

• by coldcode on 1/19/14, 2:24 PM

  http://thecodist.com/article/all-i-need-to-know-to-be-a-bett...

• by wellboy on 1/19/14, 12:26 PM

  "It's time to grow up, fuck no" http://appreneur-diaries.com/its-time-to-grow-up-fuck-no

• by andersthue on 1/19/14, 6:46 PM

  How to Deal With Crappy People

  http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/06/how-to-deal-with-crappy...

  Made my life easier

• by hkmurakami on 1/19/14, 2:59 PM

  the complete guide to not giving a fuck

  http://inoveryourhead.net/the-complete-guide-to-not-giving-a...

• by rett12 on 1/19/14, 11:00 PM

  Why you will fail to have a great career by Larry Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKHTawgyKWQ

• by gesman on 1/20/14, 12:36 AM

  http://swombat.com/2014/1/10/money-and-wealth

• by DavidMunroe83 on 1/20/14, 3:48 AM

  http://www.davidmunroeart.com/artists-blog.html

• by asselinpaul on 1/19/14, 12:57 PM

  I always like to re-read these: http://worrydream.com/

• by trumbitta2 on 1/19/14, 11:51 AM

  The bits about creating and shipping products by Nathan Barry and Amy Hoy

• by dschiptsov on 1/19/14, 12:50 PM

  http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

• by PavlovsCat on 1/19/14, 4:46 PM

  I'm not sure about "most inspiring", but this was the first time something on the internet blew my mind: http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/symbols.html