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 orderHoly shit. I got shivers the moment I realized Sinclair actually finds and fixes a bug from the very first program written in 1843. In her “diagram of development,” Lovelace gives the fourth operation as v5 / v4. But the correct ordering here is v4 / v5. 1843! I was recently at the Musee des arts et metiers in Paris, and they have several original Pascalines on display. So many marvels packed into a very tight space, it is one…
> In her “diagram of development,” Lovelace gives the fourth operation as v5 / v4. But the correct ordering here is v4 / v5. This may well have been a typesetting error and not an error in the program that Lovelace devised. All the same, this must be the oldest bug in computing. I marveled that, for ten minutes or so, unknowingly, I had wrestled with this first ever bug. The real mark of a non-trivial program is that it…
I found this excellent article while searching for the details of Ada Lovelace's original program. Amazing how legible the thought process is as a modern day programmer! Also see this other writeup which goes into much finer detail about the algorithm: https://enigmaticcode.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/running-the-f...
"Her program calculated a number that she called B7, which modern mathematicians know as the eighth Bernoulli number."
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
- 776
- Total comments
- 183
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-08-20 | What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?First breakout · Best thread | weebst | 410 | 52 |
| 2020-01-02 | What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Do? | utopian3 | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-01-06 | What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Do? | etxm | 2 | 1 |
| 2020-04-22 | What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Do? | kristianp | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-02-11 | What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Do? (2018) | ciconia | 3 | 0 |
| 2023-06-26 | What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Do? (2018) | skupig | 3 | 1 |
| 2024-12-16 | What did Ada Lovelace's program actually do? (2018)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | mitchbob | 355 | 129 |