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 saw the repeating 'A' at the end of the base64 text and thought "it's not even 512 bytes; it's smaller!" That said, the title is just a little clickbaity --- it's a C-subset compiler, and more accurately a JIT interpreter. There also appears to be no attempt at operator precedence. Nonetheless, it's still an impressive technical achievement and shows the value of questioning common assumptions. Finally, I feel tempted to offer a small size optimisation: sub ax,2 is 3…
If this implementation had existed in the 1980s, the C standard would have a rule that different tokens hashing to the same 16-bit value invoke undefined behavior, and optimizing compilers in the 2000s would simply optimize such tokens away to a no-op. ;)
[2023] Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064971
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
- 854
- Total comments
- 160
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-05-24 | SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytesFirst breakout · Best thread | xorvoid | 465 | 80 |
| 2024-09-11 | SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes (2023) | fanf2 | 7 | 1 |
| 2025-09-03 | SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes (2023) | divbzero | 1 | 0 |
| 2026-02-07 | SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytesLatest 20+ point return | valyala | 381 | 79 |