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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 orderThere's also Monodraw, ASCII drawing with a native MacOS GUI and more advanced tools. https://monodraw.helftone.com/
+----------------------+ | Just | |----------------------| | | | | | | | | +----------+-----------+ | +------------------+ | +----------------------+ | an | | | example | |------------------| | |----------------------| | | | | | | |<--------------+---------------->| | | | | | | | | | +------------------+ +----------------------+
For what it's worth, I keep a file in my home folder containing some box drawing characters. It's not super fast to draw by copy-paste but the result usually looks quite nice. ─ │ ┌ ┬ ┐ ┄ ┆ ├ ┼ ┤ ╲ ╱ ┈ ┊ └ ┴ ┘ ━ ┃ ┏ ┳ ┓ ┏ ┯ ┓ ┏ ┳ ┓ ┏ ┯ ┓ ┅ ┇ ┣ ╋ ┫ ┣ ┿ ┫ ┠ ╂ ┨ ┠ ┼ ┨ ┉ ┋ ┗…
The problem with visual diagramming tools as far back as Visio, is how much of a time suck they are even for simple diagrams. If you're one of those folks who manages to stick with one long enough to create a stable of templates for common diagrams, you can become somewhat more efficient, but it's always going to be fiddly. I've embraced the diagrams-as-code world, with graphviz, plantuml, Structurizr DSL, AsciiDoctor Diagram, Mermaid, and WebSequenceDiagrams all having a place. It's…
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
- 6
- Total points
- 1652
- Total comments
- 321
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking