Hammock Driven Development - Rich Hickey
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN returns to it constantly as permission and method for thinking deeply before coding, and as an antidote to always-working anxiety.
What it is
Rich Hickey's philosophical talk from the first Clojure Conj in 2010. He argues that good design comes from deliberate, away-from-keyboard thinking, and describes how to feed the background mind so it solves problems.
Recommended by 12 HN commenters across 11 different months, 2014 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec hire_charts · 2016-02 · on “Rich Hickey Fanclub”
That and Hammock Driven Development: [this video] Both of these talks are in my top 5. Edit (okay, here are the other 3): * All the Little Things by Sandi Metz [LINK] * Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted. [LINK] * Some talk I saw by Dan McKinley on making Data-Driven decisions. I can't find the original video, but here's a really similar one: [LINK]
Recommends cageface · 2014-09 · on “The End of Agile: Death by Over-Simplification”
This is a classic and hilarious series of posts on the foolhardiness of the TDD approach to software design: [LINK] Personally I prefer Rich Hickey's "Hammock Driven Development": [this video]
Recommends bjwbell · 2015-03 · on “Stanford study shows success of different programming styles in CS class”
"don't get stuck" reminds me of the feynman method of problem solving: 1. Write down the problem. 2. Think very hard. 3. Write down the answer. Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven Development, [this video] , is IMO very good for actually not getting stuck in a bad place problem solving.
Recommends dyadic · 2016-02 · on “Building a Startup in 45 Minutes per Day While Deployed in Iraq”
This is very similar to what Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure) talks about when he talks about Hammock Driven Development, I recommend watching him talking about it here: [this video]
Recommends abc_lisper · 2016-06 · on “Ask HN: How many programmers out there keep a paper notebook for their projects?”
I was searching for exactly the same stuff yesterday, and I found this: [LINK] I usually keep notebooks, but I am ever more convinced of using one because of Rich hickey's talk: [this video] and we have a better chance of remembering something if we write than type. [LINK] . I have previously read that people like Martin Gardner had an awesome system of keeping notes. I would love to know more about your tips. How do keep your notes? How do you organize stuff, while retaining the freedom to doodle. How do you find stuff again(which is the killer feature for typed notes). Would love to learn from the masters - do you have any books to recommend?
Recommends udfalkso · 2017-01 · on “Lecture on Creativity (1991)”
I have loved this talk for some time and have forced everyone at my company to watch the video. I found a lot of parallels with this "Hammock Driven Development" talk by Rich Hickey: [this video] They both seem to suggest that you have to put in the effort, do the hard work and dig into the problem deeply. But then when you hit a wall, you should take a break. Relax. Play. Sleep. It is often during this "open" minded stage when the solution comes.
Recommends digaozao · 2017-10 · on “Streams: a new general purpose data structure in Redis”
I like this kind of development also. But I don't think it is for everyone (the person has to keep thinking on the problem for long time). A good talk about It, from the creator of clojure: [this video]
Recommends valw · 2018-06 · on “Readme-Driven Development (2010)”
This makes me think of Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven Development: [this video] - "Stay away from the computer" - Start by asking: "what is the problem?"