Ask HN: What are the best engineering blogs with real-world depth?

Great list, thank you. The only thing to note is that whenever I imported a large list like this in the past, I always stopped checking my RSS reader after a while because the content wasn't interesting. I think finding RSS/adding it to a reader should happen organically over time.

By domysee 2025-12-2810:261 reply

This may be because most feed readers don't have a proper way to triage items. Adding a feed doesn't mean you want to read everything from said feed. Usually only a subset of articles are interesting.

I built a feed reader with that concept in mind, having a separate triage stage where you only decide if it's worth reading or not. This will make it easier to handle large feed lists and find the best articles from them.

https://lighthouseapp.io/

By theshrike79 2025-12-300:16

I just build feed hydrators that get the feeds, filter them and generate a new feed for FreshRSS to consume.

For example my HN feed only surfaces articles with enough votes + comments and a few other variables.

All high-content feeds also have a maximum number of items, if it goes over they're marked as read.

By phrotoma 2025-12-2315:161 reply

Your website is a work of art. Bravo <3

By petercooper 2025-12-2320:14

Thanks, I just treat it like my teenage bedroom, a trash heap with the occasional useful thing buried somewhere :-D

By talonx 2025-12-269:16

I remember Firefox used to have this cool feature where you could detect any RSS feeds on the page you have open.

Now if I don't see it on a page I check the page source - some blogs don't advertise the feed but it's there.

By onion2k 2025-12-2311:42

Spotify and Tailscale do...

https://engineering.atspotify.com/feed

https://tailscale.com/blog/index.xml

By spondyl 2025-12-2320:17

Some of them redesign their blog layouts every 6 months, abandoning and then eventually rediscovering RSS. It's extremely annoying.

By embedding-shape 2025-12-2311:431 reply

> I am quite surprised and a bit disappointed that almost none of them have RSS.

I think it's on purpose. It is to signal that these (those without RSS) aren't really "engineering" blogs at all, they're marketing websites aimed to help with recruiting and making the organization seem "engineering-like".

By zbentley 2025-12-2312:251 reply

What? That makes no sense. RSS is beloved and known among engineers. Marketers? Not so much.

By embedding-shape 2025-12-2312:261 reply

Exactly, so if the blog doesn't have RSS, you know they're probably made from marketers with no input from engineering, otherwise they'd have RSS on the blogs.

Edit: Ah, noticed I made a without/with typo, fixed that, should make about 2% more sense now for the ones who the original meaning was unclear :)

By zbentley 2025-12-2312:271 reply

Oh, I read your post backwards (thought you said RSS == more likely fluff). My fault, sorry!

By embedding-shape 2025-12-2312:38

To be fair to you, my original comment did say:

> It is to signal that these (those with RSS) aren't really "engineering" blogs at all

So now when I corrected that with/without typo, it looks like your previous comment doesn't make sense, but it kind of did, at the time. Sorry about that and thanks for making me realize the typo!

By rldjbpin 2025-12-270:31

i wish the aggregators supported rss feeds.

By xnorswap 2025-12-2311:032 reply

You might be more interested in books than a blog.

For example: The Architecture of Open Source Applications

https://aosabook.org/en/index.html

By leoh 2025-12-2321:02

Absolutely fantastic, thank you!

By alhirzel 2025-12-2311:36

Such a great resource!

By iancmceachern 2025-12-2316:2612 reply

It's so interesting to me as a Mechanical Engineer and Hardware designer/architect how on HN "Engineering" almost always means "Software engineering" here.

By throwaway4PP 2025-12-2317:531 reply

It is funny, almost as funny as an entire cadre of people with “engineer” in their title who've never had to draw a free body diagram, learn circuit analysis, understand the basics of thermodynamics, or the mechanics of materials.

By p2detar 2025-12-2318:021 reply

I hold a CS master degree from an Eastern European university and everything you listed was in our Bachelor degree program. It’s pretty funny because while studying material properties back then I always wondered how and when am I gonna use that. It kind of makes sense now that I think about it - some students preferred branching out to hardware.

edit: typo

By throwaway4PP 2025-12-2319:032 reply

That’s great, unfortunately it is quite rare for CS undergrad programs in the US to require the basic engineering and science classes the other engineering/science majors require.

By zahlman 2025-12-2320:151 reply

Do you not have separate "software engineering" and "computer science" undergrad streams?

By aduty 2025-12-2322:22

At most places, no. Lol.

By nxor 2025-12-2319:18

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By CommenterPerson 2025-12-2321:171 reply

Hear hear. The word "Technology" has also been redefined to mean computer or phone stuff. As a real (manly) engineer, this pisses me off no end! :-)

To answer the OP, this Civil engineering blog / video site is really good. I always learn something new, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Well worth giving it a look:

https://practical.engineering/

By talonx 2025-12-269:18

And worse - when I open Google News all the news under Technology is about the latest mobile phones and "gadgets".

By jvanderbot 2025-12-2316:373 reply

I would love more blogs on mechanical, hardware, and especially industrial engineering, but the demographics in those areas skew stereo-typically older and also likely less blog-oriented, right?

By georgeburdell 2025-12-2317:01

Blogs are almost 30 years old at this point, but yes, I do associate a nearly compulsive need to show off one's work in meticulously-crafted blog posts with younger people.

By UntappedShelf21 2025-12-244:15

Would you consider Chris Boden the type of content you’re interested in? https://youtube.com/@physicsduck?si=WJS3UbDF0VWKwOgy

By wheelinsupial 2025-12-2318:07

Depending on what you're looking for in industrial engineering, there are a lot of blogs on lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System. INFORMS, may be paywalled, also publishes a lot of pretty interesting articles on applications of operations research to industry.

In general, though, my very limited experience working in manufacturing was that much of the blog equivalents were covered in things like white papers from hardware manufacturers or articles in trade publications. We always had a bunch of magazines delivered each month and there were usually some interesting articles to review.

By metadope 2025-12-2319:54

I remember feeling sheepish when I was hired to a position titled 'Software Engineer'. To me, those two words together seemed incongruent. Not quite an oxymoron but certainly a puzzlement.

Maybe, generously, in retrospect, an aspiration?

I never considered myself an actual engineer; I was (and still am) a self-taught un-credentialed computer programmer. More art than science. They made me take the title and the stock options and the business cards.

I mostly worked for and with EEs, making software tools for test automation. I was a fanboy hardware wannabee (and still am), got some on me but was never a true engineer. I learned from those who practiced their discipline; it was plain to me the reality of real engineering versus what I was doing.

I suppose in my travels I have on occasion encountered a true Software Engineer. I suppose there's reason to hope that software development will continue to mature and evolve, and eventually the other engineering disciplines will accept software as a science.

For me, it will always be a joy to make that hardware work with my twiddly bits. Not engineering, no. But very rewarding work that often resembles engineering.

By nishilpatel 2025-12-245:101 reply

Fair Observation, HN surrounded by mostly Software guys, which directly add nuances of "Engineering" and <Software> Engineering.

but to specific is much important, imo Engineering means "Solving problem at a scale", irrelevant of the industry.

By h3half 2025-12-2413:02

Perhaps. Sometimes the scale is "one" - the amount of engineering that goes into bespoke space missions is very large, and very little of that work is re-used for anything other than direct follow up missions

By jupin 2025-12-2317:54

I thought the same. Check out this mechanical engineering channel - https://youtu.be/8yUsDnBXo_g?si=CXzWV9D5OvHcCBm3

By eru 2025-12-245:44

Well, engineer without any qualification used to refer only to combat engineers. (The term civil engineering betrays that history.)

Words change meaning over time and with the audience.

By sp4nner 2025-12-2318:37

Agreed, though I understand the YC bias. I'm in biotech and mostly follow HN just to see what the software people are interested in these days.

By beechiaseed 2025-12-2421:49

one of the few places I’ve found that consistently talks about hardware / manufacturing stuff is https://hardwarefyi.com, i read it pretty religiously

By mrandish 2025-12-2323:31

Yeah, even as a software engineering type I immediately thought the question was too broadly posed. I assume the OP must have had something narrower in mind.

By aristofun 2025-12-2915:31

Because it’s a computer geeks forum, what else do you expect??

By tekno45 2025-12-2318:00

people building physical things are probably too busy to blog about it lol