In my April retrospective, I evaluate the process for writing my book and look for ways to make it faster and more measurable. I also share a preview of a tool I'm working on to better understand Hacker News, and I try out a DRM-free movie store. https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2025/05/

Thanks to a reader suggestion, I updated my post about calling C code from Zig so that everything builds again with the latest Zig (0.14.0). https://mtlynch.io/notes/zig-call-c-simple/

I'm now famous enough that people remember vague, disconnected details about me

I haven’t seen many authors crowdfund their books before completing them, so I thought I’d write about why I did it, which parts of the process worked well, and which parts turned out to be a waste of time. https://mtlynch.io/my-6k-advance/

One gotcha when you create a podcast is that you should never give out your platform's RSS URL to listeners or podcast directories. Instead, you can use a CDN to give your podcast a custom domain, regardless of which podcast platform you use. https://mtlynch.io/notes/bunny-podcast-feed/

If you're in the Western Mass area and run a business or side project or you're interested in starting one, come join me at our next meetup on Tuesday, May 20th - 2pm at Esselon Cafe in Hadley, MA.

In March, I published more blog posts than ever before. In my latest retrospective, I share how I chose those posts and how their actual performance compared with my predictions. I'm also looking for book publishing software recommendations, if you've got 'em. https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2025/04/

I played around more with the Hacker News Popularity Contest site and now you can view stats for your domain. https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/domain/?d=mtlynch.io

The pre-sale for my book has now reached $6,100 of its $5k goal. You'd think it comfortably reached its target, but just four days ago, I was totally convinced I'd failed. I'd only raised $3k, and I had no idea how I'd find the last $2k https://mtlynch.io/book-pre-sale-just-barely-succeeded/

@siddhantgoel - What tool did you use to write your book? Would you recommend it?

My blog post about writing blog posts that appeal to Hacker News is on the front page of Hacker News

In the nine years I've been blogging about software development, some of my posts have hit 300k+ readers, while others flopped, especially early on. I'm sharing all the lessons I learned the hard way about how to write popular blog posts for developers. https://refactoringenglish.com/chapters/write-blog-posts-developers-read/

If in the Western Mass area and you've got an indie business, side project, or want to start one, join me next week for a meetup in Hadley, MA https://www.meetup.com/nerdsummit/events/306936067/

Hacker News fickleness strikes again! I submitted my tool to figure out HN's favorite bloggers twice as Show HNs, and it flopped both times. But then someone just submitted it, and it's on the front page.

I recently revisited one of my favorite posts about git commit messages and was surprised to discover I could no longer use it as an example of good software engineering https://mtlynch.io/no-longer-my-favorite-git-commit/

I was always curious who the most popular personal bloggers are on Hacker News, so I made a web app to figure it out. https://refactoringenglish.com/tools/hn-popularity/

In my February retrospective, I talk about how my book is going and how I was pleasantly surprised using Kickstarter to raise money for it https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2025/03/

I'd like to write a book to help developers improve their writing. It will teach you how to write effective emails, engaging blog posts, and clear documentation for your work. If that sounds interesting to you, consider pre-ordering to support the project. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mtlynch/refactoring-english/

I installed Snowflake Proxy to help people avoid censorship, but the server is still mostly idle. I'm thinking something like SETI@Home where you donate compute but you get to see cool stuff as the volunteer

Commit messages don’t get much respect, so the world is littered with useless messages like "Fix bug" or "Update UI." Here's my guide to writing commit messages that are useful to you and your teammates. https://refactoringenglish.com/chapters/commit-messages/