Documentation & references

Documentation & references that Hacker News readers keep rediscovering.

Hall of Fame: 38
Candidates: 48
Topics: 12
Median span: 5.8 yrs

Topics in Documentation & references

12 topics

Software engineering 45 links 20 Hall · 25 Candidates Web & internet 11 links 7 Hall · 4 Candidates Computer science 5 links 2 Hall · 3 Candidates Design & creativity 4 links 1 Hall · 3 Candidates Mathematics & science 4 links 0 Hall · 4 Candidates Security & privacy 4 links 1 Hall · 3 Candidates Space & transportation 4 links 3 Hall · 1 Candidates Work & careers 3 links 1 Hall · 2 Candidates Culture & media 2 links 1 Hall · 1 Candidates History & humanities 2 links 0 Hall · 2 Candidates AI & data 1 link 1 Hall · 0 Candidates Economics & business 1 link 1 Hall · 0 Candidates

Strongest Hall records

38 items

Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design (2003)

spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu Reference 18 submissions · 16 people · 14.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-05 Resurfaced 2023-08-09 archived copy

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How SQLite Is Tested

www.sqlite.org Reference 23 submissions · 20 people · 16.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-12 Resurfaced 2025-12-17

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Laws of UX

lawsofux.com Reference 17 submissions · 17 people · 8.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-08 Resurfaced 2026-04-29

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Incomplete list of mistakes in the design of CSS

wiki.csswg.org Reference 14 submissions · 11 people · 10.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-09 Resurfaced 2025-12-11

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The Twelve-Factor App

12factor.net Reference 62 submissions · 61 people · 14.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-04 Resurfaced 2023-10-12

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DevDocs

devdocs.io Reference 22 submissions · 22 people · 10.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-10 Resurfaced 2024-01-12

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Gail.com FAQ

gail.com Reference 15 submissions · 14 people · 10.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-08 Resurfaced 2023-01-09

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Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures

xlinux.nist.gov Reference 17 submissions · 17 people · 12.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-09 Resurfaced 2023-09-28

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Programmer Competency Matrix (2016)

sijinjoseph.com Reference 10 submissions · 10 people · 9.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-04 Resurfaced 2017-03-26

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Bash Pitfalls

mywiki.wooledge.org Reference 11 submissions · 11 people · 16.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-09 Resurfaced 2022-02-15

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418 I’m a teapot

developer.mozilla.org Reference 9 submissions · 9 people · 6.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-10 Resurfaced 2024-10-28

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How to Corrupt an SQLite Database File

sqlite.org Reference 9 submissions · 9 people · 8.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-04 Resurfaced 2022-04-30

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Latency numbers every programmer should know

gist.github.com Reference 9 submissions · 9 people · 14.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-07 Resurfaced 2020-10-03

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A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018)

github.com Reference 6 submissions · 5 people · 6.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-12 Resurfaced 2025-10-04

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Unix Toolbox

cb.vu Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 11.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-02 Resurfaced 2020-02-19

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Many Small Queries Are Efficient in SQLite

www.sqlite.org Reference 9 submissions · 7 people · 5.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-08 Resurfaced 2026-01-24

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PHP: The Right Way

www.phptherightway.com Reference 8 submissions · 7 people · 11.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-02 Resurfaced 2024-04-03

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The C4 model for visualising software architecture

c4model.com Reference 14 submissions · 13 people · 7.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-10 Resurfaced 2023-10-22

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Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

www.caniemail.com Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 4.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-05 Resurfaced 2024-05-06

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Diátaxis – A systematic approach to technical documentation authoring

diataxis.fr Reference 14 submissions · 14 people · 5.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-12 Resurfaced 2024-12-05

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CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programs

clig.dev Reference 12 submissions · 12 people · 5.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-02 Resurfaced 2024-02-06

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Fossil versus Git

www.fossil-scm.org Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 4.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-09 Resurfaced 2026-01-12

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Plain Text Accounting

plaintextaccounting.org Reference 6 submissions · 6 people · 5.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-09 Resurfaced 2024-09-15

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JSON with Sqlite

www.sqlite.org Reference 5 submissions · 5 people · 8.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-07 Resurfaced 2023-08-10

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Comprehensive Python Cheatsheet (2018)

gto76.github.io Reference 11 submissions · 5 people · 5.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-12 Resurfaced 2023-07-20

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C++ Core Guidelines

github.com Reference 6 submissions · 6 people · 10.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-03 Resurfaced 2018-03-09

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Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

www.sheldonbrown.com Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 7.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-02 Resurfaced 2026-02-06

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End of Life of Technologies and Devices

endoflife.date Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-12 Resurfaced 2023-12-10

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Amazon Web Services in Plain English

www.expeditedssl.com Reference 5 submissions · 5 people · 3.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-11 Resurfaced 2018-11-17

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Make Linux Fast Again (2019)

make-linux-fast-again.com Reference 8 submissions · 7 people · 7.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-06 Resurfaced 2022-06-14

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RFC 1178: Choosing a name for your computer (1990)

tools.ietf.org Reference 5 submissions · 5 people · 5.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-02 Resurfaced 2021-02-07

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The Man in Seat 61

www.seat61.com Reference 5 submissions · 5 people · 5.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-03 Resurfaced 2024-03-08

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Why Zig when there is already C++, D, and Rust?

ziglang.org Reference 5 submissions · 4 people · 5.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-06 Resurfaced 2024-01-22

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Statistical Formulas For Programmers

www.evanmiller.org Reference 5 submissions · 5 people · 11.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-03 Resurfaced 2025-03-13

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Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)

github.com Reference 6 submissions · 6 people · 2.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-02 Resurfaced 2019-02-21

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Briar: Peer to Peer Encrypted Messaging

briarproject.org Reference 5 submissions · 4 people · 5.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-03 Resurfaced 2025-03-14

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Patterns of Distributed Systems (2020)

martinfowler.com Reference 6 submissions · 5 people · 2.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-06 Resurfaced 2023-06-27

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Web Fundamentals: A handbook for best practices

developers.google.com Reference 5 submissions · 5 people · 2.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-12 Resurfaced 2016-12-16

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Recently resurfaced in documentation & references

latest 20+ point return

Laws of UX

lawsofux.com Reference 17 submissions · 17 people · 8.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-08 Resurfaced 2026-04-29

1037max pts

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

www.sheldonbrown.com Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 7.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-02 Resurfaced 2026-02-06

465max pts

Many Small Queries Are Efficient in SQLite

www.sqlite.org Reference 9 submissions · 7 people · 5.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-08 Resurfaced 2026-01-24

542max pts

Fossil versus Git

www.fossil-scm.org Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 4.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-09 Resurfaced 2026-01-12

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How SQLite Is Tested

www.sqlite.org Reference 23 submissions · 20 people · 16.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-12 Resurfaced 2025-12-17

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Candidates

Browse 48 candidates

“What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and press enter?”

github.com Reference 20 submissions · 19 people · 12.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-02-16

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

491max pts

Bit Twiddling Hacks

graphics.stanford.edu Reference 46 submissions · 45 people · 18.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-08-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Rust Language Cheat Sheet

cheats.rs Reference 11 submissions · 11 people · 7.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-08-30

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Appropriate Uses for SQLite

sqlite.org Reference 7 submissions · 6 people · 10.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-02-12

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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The infamous SCSH Scheme shell "Acknowledgements"

www.scsh.net Reference 13 submissions · 12 people · 17.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-01-08

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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A cheat-sheet for mathematical notation in code form

github.com Reference 9 submissions · 9 people · 6.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-09-11

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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SQLite: Outlandish Recursive Query Examples

www.sqlite.org Reference 14 submissions · 14 people · 8.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-11-24

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions

dlmf.nist.gov Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 12.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-09-04

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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USWDS: The United States Web Design System

designsystem.digital.gov Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-09-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Comparison of C/Posix standard library implementations for Linux

www.etalabs.net Reference 9 submissions · 9 people · 12.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-05-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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LabelContactRelationYoungerCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter

developer.apple.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-09-21

Needs:5 submissions

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A Framework for Writing Better Documentation

documentation.divio.com Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 3.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-03-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Pollen: the book is a program

docs.racket-lang.org Reference 10 submissions · 10 people · 7.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-10-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Linux Network Performance Parameters Explained

github.com Reference 15 submissions · 3 people · 5.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-09-06

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Search Bangs

duckduckgo.com Reference 8 submissions · 8 people · 6.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-08-31

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Why SQLite Does Not Use Git

sqlite.org Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 5.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-11-16

Needs:5 submissions

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Gitlab and remote work

about.gitlab.com Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 3.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-07-20

Needs:5 submissions

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Engineering Statistics Handbook

www.itl.nist.gov Reference 5 submissions · 5 people · 8.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-10-22

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Privately-Owned Rail Cars

www.amtrak.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 6.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-21

Needs:5 submissions

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Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

dropbox.github.io Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 3.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-01-02

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

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Apple Virtualization Framework

developer.apple.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-06-04

Needs:5 submissions

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Modern Font Stacks

modernfontstacks.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 2.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-09-30

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

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uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

github.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-10-16

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Amazon Ion – A richly-typed, self-describing, hierarchical serialization format

amzn.github.io Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-11-20

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Mithril.js – A modern client-side Javascript framework

mithril.js.org Reference 6 submissions · 6 people · 5.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-01-16

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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The <Dialog> Element

developer.mozilla.org Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 2.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-12-06

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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OpenBSD Innovations

www.openbsd.org Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 7.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-02-22

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Briar Project

briarproject.org Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 2.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-08-02

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Shell Style Guide

google.github.io Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 2.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-05-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Green's Dictionary of Slang

greensdictofslang.com Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 9.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-02-08

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Are We Wayland Yet?

arewewaylandyet.com Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 3.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-02-29

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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If you move your mouse continually the query may not fail. Do not stop moving

support.microsoft.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2014-01-04

Needs:5 submissions

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Disney Filmmaking Process

disneyanimation.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-08-09

Needs:5 submissions

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Hello system, a FreeBSD-based OS designed to resemble Mac

hellosystem.github.io Reference 3 submissions · 2 people · 2.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-08-25

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions3 submitters3 active years

319max pts

Polylith is a functional software architecture at the system scale

polylith.gitbook.io Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 5.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-07-29

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Feature comparison of ack, ag, git-grep, GNU grep and ripgrep

beyondgrep.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-10-24

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

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The Oldschool PC Font Pack v2.0

int10h.org Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 4.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-07-18

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Medieval Price List

medieval.ucdavis.edu Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 2.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-11-30

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

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F (2006)

www.nsl.com Reference 3 submissions · 3 people · 8.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-06-19

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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The magic kernel

www.johncostella.com Reference 4 submissions · 4 people · 5.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-03-19

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions3 active years

207max pts