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 disagree with this list of "falsehoods programmers believe". Most of those lists describes objectively wrong assumptions programmers have about some real-world phenomenon. But in this case I'd argue that a lot of these points are simply not correctly formatted CSV files. Just because someone handed you a file with the extension .csv does not mean it's a CSV file proper, and it certainly does not mean that you have to guess at what it intends to encode without assuming…
CSV is less a file format and more a hypothetical construct like "peace on Earth".
While you're mentioning single-byte assumptions, add some more: - All space, dash and underscore characters are single-byte I might disagree with some on your list, such as the below: - Excel can losslessly save CSVs it opens This is not always false, depending on how careful the user is. Double-clicking to open a CSV file is definitely, but using the menu to import data, then going through the UI to treat every column as Text (and not General) should be…
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
- 260
- Total comments
- 297
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-12-27 | Problems with CSVsFirst breakout | donatj | 87 | 108 |
| 2018-04-11 | Problems with CSVs (2016)Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | charlieirish | 172 | 188 |
| 2022-06-24 | Falsehoods Programmers Believe About CSVs | goplayoutside | 1 | 1 |