Starting the article off with "I did this in one day" - complete with a massive footnote disclaiming that it obviously took a lot more than one day - kinda ruined it for me. Why even bother with that totally unnecessary claim?
"I did it by myself in one day, well actually it was one week but had I known the stack I would likely have done it in one day. Oh, and by the way, after that week, there was yet another month of work involving at least two other persons from my team and then even more work from other teams. But let's not dwell on boring details".
It's nearly as infuriating as the "Appendix: stuff I screwed up" which doesn't contain actual screw up. It's a shame because the rest of the writing is interesting and doesn't need to be propped up.
- the context that the author already has a very successful career as a well-known developer
- the humility he evidences in most posts on his blog
- the fact that he explicitly highlights the work of others in this post alongside his own
I really don't think Dan is doing this as any form of personal marketing. He has no need of personal marketing, his blog already has several million views per month and frequently shows up on HN as it is, and it isn't really his style.
Were you able to move past this to read the rest of the article? Because it's a very good article.
If that point needed to be made (and I don't think it really did in this article, that's not the focus), it could have been done more carefully.
The post about salary reads much better so might just be an experience thing.