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Ask HN: What are some great personal blogs/portfolios?

308 points by buildlove ↗ HN
I've been considering creating a personal website where I can post software projects I've done and write blog posts about them. I've found a couple inspirational engineers that produce a lot of interesting projects and content on their personal pages, but I'm sure there's a ton of people who have great blogs that I've never heard of.

Who are some of your favorites?

118 comments

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amrshafik
This portfolio showcase page doesn't contain software project blog posts per se but has a lot of solid designer portfolio examples that might be interesting to check out: https://www.semplice.com/showcase
otras
Highly recommend patio11's site and blog: https://www.kalzumeus.com/

His post on salary negotiation should be mandatory reading for all software engineers: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

deepGem
I had missed this gem of a post. "Put in $1 then to get the ball rolling, and we’ll circle back to this later.” - How could I have not said something simple like this in my previous negotiations :) Baller of a post.
WestCoastJustin
Not only his site, but his comment history is also a gold mine too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11

He has helped countless people by giving great advice. I'd really suggest reading his "You Can Probably Stand To Charge More" posts. This should be essential reading for any contractors. This personally helped me double my income.

Read here:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/08/14/you-can-probably-stand-..., https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/, and https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...

patio11
Thanks, that made my morning!
WestCoastJustin
Honestly, thank you! Just checked my email. I chatted with you all the way back on Oct 17-22, 2014!
bluetidepro
Do a quick search here on Designer News: https://www.designernews.co/ (it’s like HN but more design focused). They have hundreds of posts of amazing portfolios and personal sites. You’ll get a ton of inspiration there.
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barrowclift
If self-promotion is allowed in this context, I'd like to suggest my own website as a good example: https://barrowclift.me
reacweb
I love it. My minimalistic blog is build using pandoc. Would it bother you if I plagiarized your blog styles.
ctnb
Julia Evans' blog is one of my favorites: https://jvns.ca/
josephmosby
Seconded. Julia's blog looks nice, has great explanations, and did a LOT for me as a junior developer about feeling confident in all the things that I didn't know at the time but was excited to learn.
yuy910616
dan wang. he wrote why so few people major in CS. interesting dude. https://danwang.co/

bill gurley, investor http://abovethecrowd.com/

wenc
I discovered Dan Wang through Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution Blog (a great blog for folks with omnivorous interests).

Dan seems to be a deep thinker (philosophy major). He doesn't write about engineering so much, but what he does write about he goes deep.

yuy910616
that's exactly how I found him... Did you major in Econ or something?
wenc
Not really. I have no econ background at all but I still find Tyler's blog interesting.
yuy910616
That's great to hear! I always thought only econ people read that blog. Did you find stratechery through MR yet? If not...Ben Thompson is worth a read for sure.
wenc
I've known about Stratechery for some time. I understand the content is very good, but my interests aren't quite in that space.
valleyjo
This one is from my coworker. One of the best engineers I have ever worked with. It amazes me how they can be so productive at work and be so prolific with this blog. It goes back a log time.

http://writeasync.net

daleco
I'm on the same boat, here are some UX Designers portfolios that I found interesting and bookmarked. Even if it's a different profession, you may find inspiration there:

http://jaredgranger.com/

https://danielkorpai.com/#work

https://katiemacoy.com

https://www.vanschneider.com

https://heyshawn.co

skilled
I burst out laughing while reflecting on how good the Tobias van Schneider design is. The use of typography is absolutely marvelous. Thanks for sharing!
phosfox
I don't know if his site is getting a hug of death but it took almost 50sec (16sec DOMContentLoaded) to be completely finished loading. It's a beautiful site though.
flaviocopes
The page design is absolutely amazing, although its weight is 33MB.

Which makes me think, where do we draw the line in terms of web page size? What's acceptable as of 2019? Also considering mobile?

rchaud
> Which makes me think, where do we draw the line in terms of web page size?

We look at the business case. TVS' website would be a disaster if it was targeted at the general public, with millions of hits each day. But it's not. His work on Spotify however does have to be optimized for that audience.

His personal site however can be whatever. It's showcased on industry sites like awwwards.com and the like, and those sites are all form, no function. In this environment, Pretty = useful, because it makes his work more noticeable, which is good for getting consulting work.

_omnf
At the risk of sounding pompous. I really like my portfolio site: [link redacted]

Why? I built it for myself. Not for what I thought recruiters/employers wanted to see. I simply wanted a place to collect some of the projects I work on. And more importantly one that captured my personality a bit. It's not perfect, I look at it and see a ton things I'd refactor. But it get's people to laugh or start a conversation about something I've done. That to me makes it all worth it.

My $0.02: Don't build a portfolio site because you think you need one, build one if it serves a purpose for you. i.e. learning a new skill, organizing your work, or just having fun. I think the results are much more interesting that way. (Also, don't be afraid to iterate. I think this is the 5th one I've attempted to make)

codesternews
Bro it's so amazing and unexpected. Great work and creativity.
eppsilon
I like the "hello" button. :) The font weight of the body text is almost painfully light though.
mrspeaker
"I'm a javascript developer. What did you expect to see here without Javascript enabled?". Instant whitelist!
theandrewbailey
I got a completely blank page running Firefox + uMatrix with no scripts running.
jefflombardjr
[link redacted]

Sorry, you have to file an issue. Please read the issues guidelines before submitting :) </tongue-in-cheek-humor>

elhudy
As a non-coder it feels like the learning curve for building a website portfolio is super high - even though I am told by coders that it is not. Could anyone lend some guidance on where to start?
sotojuan
I mean, if you really want the easy way out, just pay Squarespace or another WSIWYG website builder. That's what a lot of my artist and photographer friends use.
rchaud
That's what I was going to suggest. If you're a non-coder who needs a portfolio site, you already have a body of work ready to show. Put that up on a Squarespace site with a nice template instead of wasting time going through HTML/CSS video courses to create one from scratch.

If you're genuinely interested in building from the ground up, definitely go ahead. But if that's not really your goal, you will almost certainly be disappointed with your first site. HTML/CSS courses don't cover design (typography, element spacing, color palettes), so you'll look at your site, you'll know it's ugly but you won't know why. And you won't want to put it online, thereby wasting even more time.

Don't do that. Let your work speak for you, and don't feel embarrassed about using a template. Your audience cares about the quality of your content only, they will be completely oblivious to what is happening behind the scenes.

Hoasi
> As a non-coder it feels like the learning curve for building a website portfolio is super high - even though I am told by coders that it is not.

It is not high if you don't try to reinvent the wheel. Fortunately, you can build upon generous people's work. Using frameworks is fine unless you end up using things you don't need. There is still a learning curve, of course, because you need to learn where to look for answers. But building a portfolio site is indeed not that complicated.

Non-coder here, I started with WordPress, spent a lot of time learning how to code my own theme. Then I ditched it, learned the basics about how Git works, set up a static site using Jekyll, styled it with Tachyons. Then I added a gallery functionality and a few custom tweaks, just looking things up as I went. My site is now way simpler to maintain and faster. What took hours to look up and fix now seems easy.

Putting your portfolio site together yourself is time well spent.

jefflombardjr
There is an overwhelming amount of info out there on how to build websites. But in reality, it all boils down to three things:

1. HTML: Where you tag the content of your website. ( paragraphs, titles )

2. CSS: Where you define style of your website. (font colors, etc.)

3. Javascript: Where you define the functionality of your website. (i.e. what should happen when a button is clicked?)

For me that was the aha! moment. Everything else was just noise. Yes there is a learning curve, but it isn't all that bad if you ignore the noise.

I would recommend against all of the "Learn everything you need" type courses. and just focus on these three courses:

* https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html

* https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-css

* https://www.codecademy.com/learn/introduction-to-javascript

That is how I started.

zhte415
Perhaps just start. Not on coding, but on content. Coding facilitates, but a lot of people have already spent a lot of time coding things already. My own 'portfolio' is a wiki, looks neither pretty nor ugly, at least to me, with a heck of a lot of text, about things that interest me. Wiki because of a realisation that chronological order didn't seem to make sense to a body of work that can be added to constantly.
blueprint_for
What's it like being a developer in the Philadelphia area? That's near my hometown but I have a tough time searching around there.
jefflombardjr
It's different, but not bad once you establish yourself... really helps to have a network. Speaking of which.. if you're nearby come join us and say hello! [link redacted]
bobbydreamer
Nice and clean. I like it. There are so many fancy sites and bootstraps but finally in the end, if you have coded it and it can last next 10 years without a major change to the site design and you can focus on adding content to the site. That's a win.

I am working on my site http://www.bobbydreamer.com

Got side tracked and built this, a note taking app. https://Stash.bobbydreamer.com

It's still in development.

prani10
i like the design ., but the small font really annoys me, atleast one size big would be better!
larrywright
I love the books page - borrowing that idea.
joelx
My blog joelx.com is fun for me and has thirteen years of posts chronicling my transition from employee to founder /CEO of a 130 employee company.
iancmceachern
I'm going to go the other way with my comment and ask for feedback on my portfolio page.

https://www.iancollmceachern.com

Please feel free to email feedback to the contact info on my page or post it here. Thank you in advance.

(Edited to add that I'm a hardware product designer, providing mechanical and systems engineering services for medical devices and other mission critical hardware)

stingrae
Here were my first impressions: - It is very gray. The blog looks much better with it's white space.

- I don't get what the shopping cart is for.

- The header isn't centered.

- The font is very heavy feeling.

- I like the contact page. I feel like that should be your main page, with the side bar links moved to be across the top of the page.

I'd also like to get feedback on my personal website: https://raemond.com