Our Magazine
HACKER BITS is the monthly magazine that gives you the hottest technology stories straight from Hacker News. We select from the top voted stories for you and email them to you in an easy-to-read email magazine format.
hacker bits
Learn more, work less, stay current.
new bits
Welcome to issue 19 of Hacker Bits!
We’ll be publishing Ask Hacker Bits (our first column!) in about two weeks!
Ask Hacker Bits (or Ask HB) is a new column that features actual tech questions submitted from programmers just like you. We’re going to try to keep the column language agnostic. Stay tuned.
Without further ado, here’s issue 19… 
– Ray and Maureen
content bits
Learn more
- How to Improve a Legacy Codebase by Jacques Mattheij
- How to read more: Simple three-step system by Dean Yeong
- Learn how to be a more effective engineer by Edmond Lau
- How HTTPS Handshake Happens by Sudhakar Rayavaram
- Better Software Design with Clean Architecture by Mark Macneil
Work less
- The meaning of life in a world without work by Yuval Noah Harari
- Web Developer Security Checklist by Michael O’Brien
- Avoid These 35 Habits That Lead to Unmaintainable Code by Christian Maioli Mackeprang
- Are You a Self-Interrupter? by Adam Gazzaley & Larry D. Rosen
- For an Inclusive Culture, Try Working Less by Rich Armstrong
Stay current
- Websites can now fingerprint a device when multiple browser instances are used by Dan Goodin
- Best websites a programmer should visit by Sonkeng Maldini
- Career Monogamy: The Awkward Tech Sin of Longevity by Brian Nemhauser
- An all-in-one beginner’s guide to modern React application development by Devin Abbott
- TDD did not live up to expectations by Eric Gunnerson
Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below, email us or find us on Twitter @hackerbits.
Past Issues
Learn more
- How I Write Tests by Nelson Elhage
- Unconventional way of learning a new programming language by Sahil Dua
- Ways to Read More Books by Neil Pasricha
- An Abridged Cartoon Introduction To WebAssembly by Lin Clark
- JavaScript resource-tutorial by Ilya Kantor
Work less
- I am not a self-made man by Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js by Scott Nonnenberg
- Ask HN: How do you keep improving? (fixed from last month)
- Ask HN: For those programming 10+ years, what do you wish you knew 4 years in?
- Going for the 5 hour workday by Krister Viirsaar
Stay current
- Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews by Aline Lerner
- Ask HN: Other communities like HN?
- Ask HN: Mailing lists that HN readers ought to know about?
- Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology by James Tulloch & Greg Langley
- Google I/O 2017 by Google
Learn more
- JavaScript: The Right Way by William Oliveira
- Zen and the Art of Unit Testing by Marcin Chwedczuk
- Green Tea Press – Free Books (also published by O’Reilly) by Allen Downey
- Ask HN: How do you keep improving?
- Elements of JavaScript Style by Eric Elliott
Work less
- Programmer Competency Matrix by Sijin Joseph
- Evidence-based advice we’ve found on how to be successful in a job by 80,000 Hours
- How to talk about yourself in a developer interview by Nick Larsen
- The 10x developer is not a myth by Yevgeniy Brikman
- Prepack helps make JavaScript code more efficient by Facebook
Stay current
- Ask HN: What are some good technology blogs to follow?
- My giant JavaScript Basics course is now live on YouTube. And it’s 100% free by Beau Carnes
- What programming languages are used late at night? by David Robinson
- An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React by Gianluca Guarini
- Software Developers after 40, 50 and 60 Who’re Still Coding by Vladimir Kazankov
Learn more
- Master JavaScript Programming with 18 Open-Source Books by Steve Emms
- Teach Yourself Computer Science by Ozan Onay and Myles Byrne
- How to Learn New Things as an Adult by Olga Khazan
- Modules vs Microservices by Sander Mak
- Reverse Engineering Malware 101 by Amanda Rousseau
Work less
- How I Became a Better Programmer by James Long
- How to answer the “What’s your current salary?” job interview question by Josh Doody
- How Subtle Class Cues Can Backfire on a Resume by Lauren Rivera and András Tilcsik
- The Debugging Mindset by Devon H. O’Dell
- How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week? by Brian Knapp
Stay current
- Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
- Ask HN: What are some good technology blogs to follow?
- Free resources for learning full-stack web development by Brandon Morelli
- Modern JavaScript for Ancient Web Developers by Gina Trapani
- Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2017 by Kamran Ahmed
Our Contributors
(just a few)
- Connector.
Scott Hanselman
Scott is a web developer and has blogged at hanselman.com for over a decade. He works in Open Source on ASP.NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft out of his home office in Portland, OR. Scott has 3 podcasts, hanselminutes.com, thisdeveloperslife.com and ratchetandthegeek.com.
- Connector.
Bill Sourour
Bill is the founder of DevMastery.com. A 20 year veteran programmer, architect, consultant, and teacher, he helps individual developers and billion dollar organizations become more successful every day.
- Connector.
Troy Hunt
Troy is a Pluralsight author, Microsoft Regional Director and Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and world-renowned internet security specialist. He’s the creator of “Have I been pwned?”, the free online service for breach monitoring and notifications and blogs at troyhunt.com from his home in Australia.
- Connector.
Jeff Atwood
Jeff is a software developer, author, blogger and entrepreneur. He is known for the programming blog Coding Horror, and is the co-founder of the Q&A website Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange Network.
- Connector.
Joe Armstrong
Joe is the inventor of the programming language Erlang. PhD in computer science, and Adjunct Professor of computer Science at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
- Connector.
Kent Beck
Kent is a software engineer, author, coach and creator of Extreme Programming. He was 1 of the 17 signatories of the Agile Manifesto and a leading proponent of TDD. He pioneered design patterns and his current academic project is a study of software design.
- Connector.
Aline Lerner
Aline is the co-founder and CEO of interviewing.io. She likes ranting on the internet about how hiring is broken, and her work has appeared in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company.
- Connector.
Tim O'Reilly
Tim is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Considered by many to be the best event producer, computer book and video publisher in the world.
- Connector.
Matt Mazur
Matt is a developer at Automattic where he focuses on growth for WordPress.com. He currently lives in Orlando, Florida, with his wife and two kids.
- Connector.
Ossi Hanhinen
Ossi has been writing web stuff since he was in elementary school. He is always trying to learn something new and interesting — nowadays surrounded by the brilliant people of Futurice.
- Connector.
Heidi Roizen
Heidi is the Operating Partner at DFJ, a lecturer on Entrepreneurship at Stanford, and a recovering entrepreneur.
Our Interviews
- Connector.
Henrik Joreteg
Henrik is a Progressive Web App developer, consultant, and educator. He is the author of Human JavaScript and creator of Ampersand.js, SimpleWebRTC, Talky.io and over 200 JavaScript libraries. He’s also spoken at O’Reilly’s FluentConf and FFConf.
- Connector.
John Sonmez
John is the founder of SimpleProgrammer.com, author of the bestselling book Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual and creator of over 50 professional developer courses ranging from iOS, Android, Game Development, Java and more.
- Connector.
Patrick J. McGinnis
Patrick is a venture capitalist and private equity investor who founded Dirigo Advisors, after a decade on Wall Street, to provide strategic advice to investors, entrepreneurs, and fast growing businesses. He is the author of The 10% Entrepreneur, published by Penguin books.
Our Objective
Our objective is to help programmers of all levels take control of their career success by learning more, working less and staying current. This is the basis for all decision-making at HACKER BITS.
We serve you by publishing the best collection of articles each month, so they are learning more, working less and staying current with the latest technologies. Ultimately, the monthly selection of articles aims to offer tips, tricks, in-depth reviews, increased productivity and better code.
We serve our experts by providing a platform for reaching and teaching to an even wider audience. As a result, both readers and authors are growing and succeeding together.
Learn. Teach. Grow.
Our FAQ
- 5 stories to help you learn more
- 5 stories to help you work less
- 5 stories to help you stay current
If we feel a story is really worth reading, we may run more than the quota for each category.
Our Team
We (Ray and Maureen) are a husband and wife team from Redmond, Washington.
Ray Li
Ray is a software engineer and data enthusiast who has been blogging at rayli.net for over a decade. He loves to learn, teach and grow. You’ll usually find him wrangling data, programming and lifehacking.
Maureen Ker
Maureen is an editor specializing in technical and science writing. She is the author of 3 books and 100+ articles, and her work has appeared in the New York Daily News, and various adult and children’s publications. In her free time, she enjoys collecting useless kitchen gadgets.