My approach to building large technical projects (2023)
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2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
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HN comment orderI have huge respect for Mitchell, it's impressive what he achieved. I agree with all the points of this article and would like to add one: Have a quick feedback loop. For me, it's really motivating to be able to make a change and quickly see the results. Many problems just vanish or become tangible to solve when you playfully modify your source code and observe the effect.
Being able to prioritize building projects like this is a skill in itself, and I think it's a really important one. People seem to chronically undervalue optimizing for shipping something. Mitchell does say "I don't talk about shipping", but shipping a demo for yourself is still shipping! It doesn't matter how good you are if you can't stick at something for a long period of time. You're probably not going to be able to do the thing for long enough…
Discussed here when it was first published - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36161397 (27 comments) - but worth revisiting now that the project it described, Ghostty, has reached 1.0: https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-1-0-reflection
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 627
- Total comments
- 80
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-06-01 | My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects | timf | 7 | 0 |
| 2023-06-02 | My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects – Mitchell HashimotoFirst breakout | akalin | 233 | 27 |
| 2024-12-28 | My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects (2023) | simonw | 2 | 1 |
| 2025-02-12 | My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects (2023) | calvinfo | 1 | 0 |
| 2025-10-10 | My approach to building large technical projects (2023)Hall induction · Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | mad2021 | 384 | 52 |