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 orderNo matter how much time I spend contemplating recursive CTE examples, I just cannot “get it” enough to write my own without a lot of trial and error and head-scratching. I would love to take a 2 hour class on “thinking in SQL for hackers” or something, but I haven’t really found anything to improve my mental model from “broken” to “working” so far.
"Udo of Aachen" was the first fictional monk to find the "Mandelbrot" set: https://users.math.yale.edu/public_html/People/frame/Fractal...
I've been been experimenting with recursive queries in SQLite, and they seem rather unreasonably performant. I've tried comparing the performance of some of the given examples with imperative code that duplicates the recursion and makes the requisite queries individually using the SQLite API. You might expect the CTEs to perform better, but I've seen them doing an order of magnitude better, which rather surprised me. Congratulations to the author who must have made some rather intensive optimizations to make…
I was just reading up on sqlite's docs to create a common table expression to return a graph of records stored with single table inheritance. Came across these gems in the docs: a mandelbrot set approximation visualizer and a sodoku solver.
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
- 447
- Total comments
- 85
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-02-08 | Plot the Mandelbrot Set in SQLite Using `WITH RECURSIVE' Clause | igravious | 2 | 0 |
| 2018-09-04 | SQL Sudoku Solver | crawshaw | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-02-20 | SQL query to generate the Mandelbrot set as ASCII artFirst breakout | mmoez | 193 | 29 |
| 2020-02-22 | SQLite Query to Solve Sudoku | flying_sheep | 31 | 0 |
| 2021-02-04 | How recursive CTE work | kdfisr | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-06-23 | Outlandish Recursive Query Examples | tim_sw | 4 | 0 |
| 2022-12-20 | Outlandish Recursive Query Examples | tantaman | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-02-01 | Found in the SQLite Docs: Sudoku Solver and Mandelbrot Set Approximation | pfarrell | 3 | 1 |
| 2023-02-12 | Approximate fractal and solve sudoku with SQLite | azurvii | 2 | 0 |
| 2023-03-11 | Outlandish Recursive Query Examples | pkilgore | 4 | 1 |
| 2024-06-01 | Outlandish Recursive Query Examples | 8organicbits | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-11-24 | SQLite: Outlandish Recursive Query ExamplesBest thread · Latest 20+ point return | Rendello | 201 | 54 |
| 2026-02-10 | Solving Sudoku with SQLite | TheCleric | 1 | 0 |
| 2026-05-14 | Outlandish Recursive Query Examples | smartmic | 1 | 0 |