Submission timeline
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.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderOn a first skim, this looks really nice; complaints that it's unreadable are unfounded. The background that makes it readable are Wirth's Compiler Construction http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf plus precedence climbing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator-precedence_parser#Prec...
I unironically love this code. We used it as a starting point (or rather, the same design; we wrote in Go) for reversing challenges at our last startup, symbolically evaluating the stack machine bytecode to generate AVR. The trick to reading it: * next() is the lexer * expr() is a precedence-climbing expression parser * stmt() parses statements and generates code * main() has the virtual machine loop.
Terse C interpreter that can interpret itself. Previous posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22353532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8558822
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
- 2
- Total points
- 983
- Total comments
- 270
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-11-04 | C4 – C in 4 functionsFirst breakout · Best thread | petercooper | 517 | 138 |
| 2016-01-28 | C4: C compiler in 4 functions | api | 1 | 0 |
| 2016-03-17 | C4 – C in four functions | rspivak | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-02-18 | C4: C in Four Functions (2014) | azhenley | 436 | 131 |
| 2023-08-26 | C4: C in Four FunctionsHall induction · Latest 20+ point return | signa11 | 24 | 0 |
| 2024-10-18 | C4 – C in four functions (2014) | levzettelin | 1 | 1 |
| 2025-09-30 | C4 – C in Four Functions | welovebunnies | 2 | 0 |