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

148 points by fromdoon ↗ HN
I was going through my bookmarks and found this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4000394

61 comments

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christiangenco
Mr. Money Mustache's account of how he retired at age 30: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...
JoshTriplett
I'm a big fan of that blog, but I actually found the most inspirational post on it to be the one that crunched the critical numbers: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

The key realization from that post: spending less and saving more helps you retire early not just because you're saving faster, but because you need less to retire: your retirement savings only has to support your expenses, not replace your full income.

christiangenco
Ahh yes! I go back and re-read that post about once a month for inspiration.
nashequilibrium
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’."

trumbitta2
The bits about creating and shipping products by Nathan Barry and Amy Hoy
stiff
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/

mproenza
I second this choice. Magnificent and deep article
dschiptsov
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
michaelochurch
Every time I read something Paul Graham wrote before he became The Godfather I get sad. It may not show in the quality of moderation we see on HN, but he's clearly an extremely talented man.
S4M
Yep, and I think the quality of his essays dropped recently. Before he became "The Godfather" his writing was really some out of the box thinking, while the recent ones seem to me almost like an ad to go to SV and get funded by YC to try to build the next Facebook.
dschiptsov
It seems like PG always had such ambitions, while the brilliant technical insights came from Rtm.
evolve2k
"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.

smoyer
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

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