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 enjoy doing pedestrian stuff; really, really well. Most of my work is open-source, as I don't really do anything particularly innovative or patent-worthy. Most of the value in my work is how I do it. I work carefully, document the living bejeezus out of my work, test like crazy, and spend a lot of time "polishing the fenders." This is something that anyone can do. It just takes patience, discipline, and care. I'm weird. I enjoy the end results…
My favorite example of this is Hadley Wickham's work on tidy data [1, 2]. Before Hadley, tools for streamlining data manipulation workflows had largely fallen stagnant. Even the best languages and tools were a chore to use. People's data prep processes tended to be idiosyncratic and hard to understand, even though there was nothing essentially new or deep about what they were doing. Data prep was an ugly chore best left to interns and grad students. It was kept out…
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
- 662
- Total comments
- 235
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-08-17 | You don’t need to work on hard problems (2020)First breakout · Best thread | _ttg | 415 | 127 |
| 2023-05-28 | You don’t need to work on hard problems(2020) | nsoonhui | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-11-07 | You don't need to work on hard problemsLatest 20+ point return | bschne | 246 | 108 |