Neil writes a personal site on design, hardware, and engineering, with posts on ZFS NAS builds, datasheets, and Hacker News design.
Commenters praise the site's design as functional, accessible, and free of clutter, and the author says his posts voice common engineering frustrations.
Neil's site is one of those where it pays to manually edit the URL to back up a level or two: https://neil.computer/notes/ has a great collection of rants and raves.
Some favorites from the last five minutes of surfing:
Apple's UI is Regressing: https://neil.computer/notes/apple-ux-ui-is-regressing/
Unsung Beauty of Analog Devices Datasheets: https://neil.computer/notes/analog-devices-datasheets/ (this one really hits home because of the downright-revolting design of their newest data sheets)
Release Notes: https://neil.computer/notes/release-notes/
The Design of Diskprices.com: https://neil.computer/notes/the-design-of-diskprices-com/
Oh, Sorry, I was on Mute: https://neil.computer/notes/oh-sorry-i-was-on-mute/
I bitch about stuff that resonates with most HN'ers and the comments here release pent up frustrations in engineering/design. Both the writing part and the reaction on HN is a fun activity. My favorite aspect is getting emails from people and making random friends on the interwebs. So it is worth it for me. My blog here if you want to check it out: https://neil.computer/. Through HN and the blog, I've made a couple of good friends that I talk to on almost daily basis.
It brings 2k unique visitors per day according to Cloudflare analytics.
I still prefer Andale Mono.
Here's an interesting take on the two: https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-december-update/
See if you can figure why I linked this one.
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More about Andalé: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalé_Mono
This conversation may still be going on 20 years from now: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200602/monospace_fonts_compared.html
Nice we have more choice since this capture in 2006: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/?topic=2499.0
Edit: It looks like satire. My bad :)
Doesn't your article here go directly against what you're saying? https://neil.computer/notes/hacker-news-design-is-ugly/
Specifically, you redesigned HN to have more "pop" and have rounded corners and padding: https://neil.computer/content/images/size/w1600/2020/07/Screen-Shot-2020-07-06-at-12.05.17-AM.png which is exactly what you were saying macOS looks like...
Isn't that hypocritical?
I don't agree with you 100% here, I believe some small tweaks could make diskprices.com more accessible. But your own main website is so damn good: https://neil.computer/
Functional, high visibility, accessibility, discoverability. There's no bullshit, no hidden anything, it's true minimalism and 100% honest. This is what actual good design looks like.
A dark mode would be nice, though.
This may be a dumb question, but how do you make a document like that fake patient chart in this demo? [1]
Is there an editor that can do things like this? Or is it all laid out by hand?
[1] https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/