The Night Watch by James Mickens

Shares rank 12 of 60 articles by recommenders

Recommended as a funny, whimsical take on systems programming, and as a strong late-career Pratchett City Watch novel of the same name.

9 people gave an opinion

Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

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The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Each mark is one comment

Funny whimsical take on systems programming
“it is a funny article thanks for that, he has a quite interesting view on the system programmers”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Nightwatch, The open-source, read-only AI SRE”
“For an amusing take on the life of a systems programmer”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Surface Laptop Ultra: Made for World Makers”
Strong late Pratchett City Watch novel
“it's honestly super impressive that they were written so long after he started to decline and were still so good.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Detecting Dementia Using Lexical Analysis: Terry Pratchett's Discworld”
“Night Watch is definitely as good as the peak 90s City Watch books.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Detecting Dementia Using Lexical Analysis: Terry Pratchett's Discworld”
Memorable quotes and favorite writing
“My favorite quote from any novel comes from that book as well”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds”
“is one of my all time favorite pieces of internet writing”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “The Saddest Moment (2013) [pdf]”

8 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“The Night Watch movies were wonderful.”

RecommendsComment from 21 Oct 2026 in “EA is shutting down BioWare”

“My favorite quote from any novel comes from that book as well”

RecommendsComment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds”

“it is a funny article thanks for that, he has a quite interesting view on the system programmers”

RecommendsComment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Nightwatch, The open-source, read-only AI SRE”

“For an amusing take on the life of a systems programmer”

RecommendsComment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Surface Laptop Ultra: Made for World Makers”

“is one of my all time favorite pieces of internet writing”

RecommendsComment from 31 Jan 2026 in “The Saddest Moment (2013) [pdf]”

“Night Watch is definitely as good as the peak 90s City Watch books.”

RecommendsComment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Detecting Dementia Using Lexical Analysis: Terry Pratchett's Discworld”

“it's honestly super impressive that they were written so long after he started to decline and were still so good.”

RecommendsComment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Detecting Dementia Using Lexical Analysis: Terry Pratchett's Discworld”

“He is capable of exploring serious themes while still maintaining some whimsy.”

RecommendsComment from 6 Jan 2026 in “X-Clacks-Overhead”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.

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Programming as Theory Buildingby Peter Naur	32	0	100%	7	—	Approved
Ur-Fascismby Umberto Eco	18	2	90%	8	—	Approved
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The Grug Brained Developer by Carson Gross	13	1	93%	9	—	Approved
The Night Watch by James MickensThis page	9	0	100%	3	—	—