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 orderI’ve had a change of heart over the years regarding macros. Prefix syntax, as in Common Lisp, makes it really easy to write macros without understanding how programming language syntax and grammars really work. As more of a “computer” person than a “computer science” person, that was super appealing. But that’s probably optimizing for the wrong case. Macros are used much more often than they are written, and the person writing the macro should probably understand syntax and grammar. Moreover…
I know at first it looks confusing, but the lisp syntax is pretty much the best. I can teach it to someone in 1 minute: (<function or macro name> arg1 arg2 ...) That's it. This is 100% of the syntax. If dealing with a function, the evaluation will always be arguments from left to right are evaluated first, and then the function is called with the result of evaluating the args. This is 95% of the cases. If dealing with…
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
- 173
- Total comments
- 150
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-09-22 | D-Expressions: Lisp Power, Dylan Style | mridulkhan | 2 | 0 |
| 2017-06-07 | D-Expressions: Lisp Power, Dylan Style (1999) [pdf]First breakout | mpweiher | 82 | 89 |
| 2024-05-16 | D-Expressions: Lisp power, Dylan style [pdf]Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | fanf2 | 89 | 61 |