Hackers Write About Truth (& Cats)

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The top story of last month was: “A guide to giving your cats their annual performance review” by Thryn, Senior Interaction Designer at Google. Pictured above is his cat Linus, who defied dress code norms by wearing skull and cross bone bling-bling. Look deep into those green eyes. These objective guidelines will ensure that your cat is managed with the rigid optimization techniques of a top tech professional.

The 2nd best performing story followed our tone of practical humor: “10 things I learned making the fastest site in the world” by David Gilbertson. If you haven’t read this yet, just know that THE Jean Vincent called it, “the funniest and informative performance article ever written.”

Overall, December was another solid month for Hacker Noon. Our subscribers grew to 53,000+ (a 29% increase month over month increase), and our climb up the Alexa rankings continued. Remember, hacking is not only funny but also serious, and however you slice it, people are searching for the best hackers to share their stories. Here are December’s top stories #3–14:

“The Programmer’s Guide to Booking a Plane” by Zeke Gabrielse. This one may sound like a continuation of the humor section, but no! This is a real problem, followed by true look inside the thought process of an engineer, data plotting, and then, a couple of $36 plane tickets purchased.

“I Made Myself a Smart Mirror” by Brian Singh. This is where software met hardware to make a college student see a smarter and more well informed self when he looked in the mirror. In related news, my wife bought me an electric toothbrush.

“How I made a SaaS webservice earning $1000 monthly profit” by Alex Moskovski. This opportunistic approach to market opportunity should be learned from. Alex’s site inadvertently began ranking for some keywords, so he built a SaaS product to monetize the traffic. Tip of the hat. Related read: “It took me 116 days to go from 0 to 1 customers” by Declan Wilson.

“Offline App Architecture: how to build for the next billion” by Android Craftsman Arun Sasidharan. A great reminder of why and how to build great app experiences for people who don’t have the privilege of fast internet. Props to Yigit Boyar, Paresh Mayani, Joanna Smith for inspiration.

“How I converted my React app to VanillaJS (and whether or not it was a terrible idea)” also by David Gilbertson. This man is a genius!

“The Cost of Native Mobile App Development is Too Damn High!” This value proposition by developer Nader Dabit gives examples of how/why/& the implications of big brands shifting toward React Native and similar technologies.

“27 popular new github repositories for web developers in 2016” by Navi Henry. These are some popular new github repositories that can be interesting for web developers. All of them earned their first 1500 stars in 2016.

“Deep Learning Cheat Sheet” by Camron Godbout. Seriously, this is the tl;dr of deep learning.

“50 Things I’ve Learned About Product Management” by John Cutler. This guy is on a roll! Read whatever he is putting out to understand the balancing, difficulties and humor that surround product management. Related reading: Dear Product Managers…, Place Your Bets, 12 Signs You’re Working in a Feature Factory & A 12-Step Program for Recovering Product Managers.

“How My 10-Year-Old Learned Javascript” by Rich Klein. This is my personal favorite story of the month. It’s just that coding — and the onslaught of language after language — are so new in a generational sense that there aren’t a ton of tales about how a father passes this skill onto his son. Related read: “Who said Javascript was easy?” by Aurélien Hervé.

“⭐️ On the Exponential View” by entrepreneur, inventor and creator azeem. This 7,500 word talk is known to cause butt kicking mindsets.

My approach to venture investing by Roger Ehrenberg, IA Ventures Managing Partner. To evaluate 1–2K startups is no easy task. Read the behind the scenes look into the interesting, exciting, frustrating and humbling work that is venture capital.

Until we meet again, “Never take anything for granted.”

Kind Regards,

David Smooke, Hacker Noon

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P.P.S. Read Hacker Noon Trending (by tag) to learn what makes hackers tick: Programming, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Web Development, Software Development, Venture Capital, JavaScript, Business, CMS, API.