Essays & articles

Essays & articles that Hacker News readers keep rediscovering.

Hall of Fame: 375
Candidates: 650
Topics: 18
Median span: 6.4 yrs

Topics in Essays & articles

18 topics

Software engineering 336 links 113 Hall · 223 Candidates Work & careers 87 links 39 Hall · 48 Candidates Web & internet 72 links 30 Hall · 42 Candidates Economics & business 65 links 26 Hall · 39 Candidates Computer science 59 links 17 Hall · 42 Candidates Security & privacy 55 links 20 Hall · 35 Candidates History & humanities 54 links 19 Hall · 35 Candidates Society & policy 51 links 20 Hall · 31 Candidates Mathematics & science 46 links 18 Hall · 28 Candidates Design & creativity 37 links 19 Hall · 18 Candidates Hardware & electronics 34 links 11 Hall · 23 Candidates Culture & media 33 links 14 Hall · 19 Candidates Education & learning 23 links 8 Hall · 15 Candidates Medicine & health 21 links 6 Hall · 15 Candidates Computer games 17 links 6 Hall · 11 Candidates AI & data 15 links 5 Hall · 10 Candidates Space & transportation 14 links 3 Hall · 11 Candidates Environment & energy 6 links 1 Hall · 5 Candidates

Strongest Hall records

375 items

We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

web.mit.edu Essays & writing 58 submissions · 51 people · 18.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-04 Resurfaced 2026-01-29

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What You Can't Say (2004)

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 31 submissions · 31 people · 14.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2014-03 Resurfaced 2022-03-16

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Choose Boring Technology (2015)

mcfunley.com Essays & writing 42 submissions · 40 people · 11.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-06 Resurfaced 2023-10-01

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The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to "The Office"

www.ribbonfarm.com Essays & writing 24 submissions · 24 people · 16.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-12 Resurfaced 2026-03-07

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A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

james-iry.blogspot.com Essays & writing 43 submissions · 42 people · 17.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2012-01 Resurfaced 2023-06-25

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Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

www.kalzumeus.com Essays & writing 24 submissions · 22 people · 14.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-09 Resurfaced 2021-08-19

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John Carmack on Inlined Code

number-none.com Essays & writing 21 submissions · 14 people · 11.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-01 Resurfaced 2024-10-06

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Maker's schedule, Manager's schedule (2009)

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 20 submissions · 20 people · 15.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-12 Resurfaced 2023-06-24

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Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

johnsalvatier.org Essays & writing 19 submissions · 17 people · 9.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-01 Resurfaced 2025-02-18

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Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy (2008)

paulgraham.com Essays & writing 15 submissions · 15 people · 17.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-03 Resurfaced 2023-01-18

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UTF-8 Everywhere

utf8everywhere.org Essays & writing 18 submissions · 17 people · 13.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-06 Resurfaced 2020-04-14

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Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 13 submissions · 12 people · 13.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-09 Resurfaced 2021-06-07

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Why numbering should start at zero (1982)

www.cs.utexas.edu Essays & writing 17 submissions · 16 people · 13.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-12 Resurfaced 2023-07-16

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Microsoft is Dead (2007)

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 13 submissions · 13 people · 16.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-05 Resurfaced 2020-12-30

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The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)

steveblank.com Essays & writing 15 submissions · 12 people · 14.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-12 Resurfaced 2023-12-16

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How I do my computing

stallman.org Essays & writing 13 submissions · 13 people · 14.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-10 Resurfaced 2023-07-29

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Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

lists.busybox.net Essays & writing 8 submissions · 8 people · 13.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-05 Resurfaced 2026-01-04

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24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

people.xiph.org Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 14.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-12 Resurfaced 2026-07-02

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Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

www.kalzumeus.com Essays & writing 31 submissions · 29 people · 16.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-11 Resurfaced 2021-03-07

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Command-line tools can be faster than a Hadoop cluster (2014)

adamdrake.com Essays & writing 11 submissions · 10 people · 7.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-03 Resurfaced 2026-01-18

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On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

norvig.com Essays & writing 13 submissions · 13 people · 14.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-06 Resurfaced 2025-12-16

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Myths about /dev/urandom

www.2uo.de Essays & writing 12 submissions · 12 people · 12.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-01 Resurfaced 2026-05-14

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Do Things that Don't Scale

paulgraham.com Essays & writing 18 submissions · 18 people · 12.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-08 Resurfaced 2025-08-15

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Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

www.gnu.org Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 15.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2014-05 Resurfaced 2019-09-24

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Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

www.coding2learn.org Essays & writing 19 submissions · 18 people · 12.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-01 Resurfaced 2025-04-10

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The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)

www.jofreeman.com Essays & writing 17 submissions · 17 people · 16.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-01 Resurfaced 2025-01-22

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Lisping at JPL (2002)

www.flownet.com Essays & writing 22 submissions · 19 people · 16.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-01 Resurfaced 2025-05-22

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-2000 lines of code

www.folklore.org Essays & writing 10 submissions · 9 people · 12.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-03 Resurfaced 2022-11-05

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Why should I have written ZeroMQ in C, not C++ (2012)

250bpm.com Essays & writing 8 submissions · 8 people · 11.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-04 Resurfaced 2022-08-12 archived copy

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Falsehoods programmers believe about time

infiniteundo.com Essays & writing 14 submissions · 13 people · 13.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-01 Resurfaced 2022-08-22

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What Color is Your Function? (2015)

journal.stuffwithstuff.com Essays & writing 25 submissions · 22 people · 11.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-05 Resurfaced 2026-05-26

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Analysis of bank PIN numbers

www.datagenetics.com Essays & writing 21 submissions · 21 people · 13.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-08 Resurfaced 2024-05-14

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You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 14.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-06 Resurfaced 2020-10-10

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Cities and Ambition

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 16 submissions · 16 people · 14.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2014-01 Resurfaced 2018-02-26

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A Spellchecker Used To Be A Major Feat of Software Engineering

prog21.dadgum.com Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 17.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-12 Resurfaced 2025-08-09

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I could do that in a weekend (2016)

danluu.com Essays & writing 14 submissions · 11 people · 9.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-04 Resurfaced 2026-07-20

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How to Disagree

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 15 submissions · 15 people · 14.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2012-11 Resurfaced 2018-02-24

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History of the browser user-agent string (2008)

webaim.org Essays & writing 37 submissions · 34 people · 17.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-03 Resurfaced 2026-01-27

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Who Can Name the Bigger Number?

www.scottaaronson.com Essays & writing 28 submissions · 28 people · 17.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-02 Resurfaced 2020-01-21

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Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?

www.viemu.com Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 13.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-04 Resurfaced 2021-12-07 archived copy

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Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

idlewords.com Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 9.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-05 Resurfaced 2026-06-01

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A Guide to Undefined Behavior in C and C++

blog.regehr.org Essays & writing 15 submissions · 15 people · 14.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-08 Resurfaced 2025-03-13

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Parse, Don’t Validate

lexi-lambda.github.io Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 6.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-03 Resurfaced 2026-02-10

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My history with Forth and stack machines (2010)

yosefk.com Essays & writing 16 submissions · 16 people · 14.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-08 Resurfaced 2024-12-28

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What is code

www.bloomberg.com Essays & writing 20 submissions · 19 people · 10.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-06 Resurfaced 2026-01-01 archived copy

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The Hardest Program I've Ever Written – How a code formatter works (2015)

journal.stuffwithstuff.com Essays & writing 11 submissions · 7 people · 10.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-11 Resurfaced 2025-10-29

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Notes on structured concurrency, or: Go statement considered harmful

vorpus.org Essays & writing 20 submissions · 20 people · 8.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-03 Resurfaced 2022-07-02

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Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

www.structuredprocrastination.com Essays & writing 21 submissions · 20 people · 19.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-04 Resurfaced 2022-02-10

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Suicide Linux

qntm.org Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 16.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-10 Resurfaced 2026-02-16

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Statically Recompiling NES Games into Native Executables with LLVM and Go

andrewkelley.me Essays & writing 12 submissions · 12 people · 12.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-08 Resurfaced 2017-09-15

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The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

theamericanscholar.org Essays & writing 20 submissions · 20 people · 16.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-12 Resurfaced 2026-05-06

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DNA seen through the eyes of a coder (2017)

ds9a.nl Essays & writing 21 submissions · 19 people · 13.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-01 Resurfaced 2018-01-25

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Computer latency: 1977-2017

danluu.com Essays & writing 17 submissions · 14 people · 8.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-12 Resurfaced 2022-11-20

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Why I Wrote PGP (1999)

www.philzimmermann.com Essays & writing 14 submissions · 13 people · 13.5 years

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

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In defense of swap: common misconceptions (2018)

chrisdown.name Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 7.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-04 Resurfaced 2025-09-21

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Life is Short

paulgraham.com Essays & writing 14 submissions · 13 people · 10.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-08 Resurfaced 2022-12-25

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How Google Code Search Worked: Regex Matching with a Trigram Index (2012)

swtch.com Essays & writing 15 submissions · 15 people · 12.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-12 Resurfaced 2024-05-27

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I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup

slatestarcodex.com Essays & writing 16 submissions · 16 people · 8.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-09 Resurfaced 2023-09-06

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Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)

pages.cs.wisc.edu Essays & writing 8 submissions · 8 people · 13.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-03 Resurfaced 2025-04-01 archived copy

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Diamonds Suck (2006)

diamondssuck.com Essays & writing 11 submissions · 6 people · 12.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-04 Resurfaced 2023-11-13

1336max pts

Recently resurfaced in essays & articles

latest 20+ point return

Hacker News Parody Thread (2013)

bradconte.com Essays & writing 6 submissions · 6 people · 13.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-11 Resurfaced 2026-07-30

1046max pts

I could do that in a weekend (2016)

danluu.com Essays & writing 14 submissions · 11 people · 9.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-04 Resurfaced 2026-07-20

712max pts

Fast Software, the Best Software

craigmod.com Essays & writing 7 submissions · 6 people · 6.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-07 Resurfaced 2026-07-05

470max pts

24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

people.xiph.org Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 14.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-12 Resurfaced 2026-07-02

732max pts

WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)

sfwriter.com Essays & writing 10 submissions · 6 people · 11.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-06 Resurfaced 2026-06-27

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Candidates

Browse 650 candidates

Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine

longnow.org Essays & writing 29 submissions · 28 people · 15.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-09-07

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

225max pts

Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

www.newsweek.com Essays & writing 20 submissions · 20 people · 12.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-02-18

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

130max pts

The Night Watch (2013) [pdf]

www.usenix.org Essays & writing 18 submissions · 16 people · 9.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-03-12

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

244max pts

A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

www.maa.org Essays & writing 27 submissions · 22 people · 9.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-05-13 archived copy

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

170max pts

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)

www.nickbostrom.com Essays & writing 19 submissions · 18 people · 13.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-12-05

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

81max pts

Design Principles Behind Smalltalk (1981)

www.cs.virginia.edu Essays & writing 17 submissions · 17 people · 14.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-12-31

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

194max pts

Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

charlespetzold.com Essays & writing 8 submissions · 8 people · 14.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-01-01 archived copy

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

108max pts

C Is Best

sqlite.org Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 7.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-01-06

Needs:5 submissions

408max pts

NSA's Backdoor Key from Lotus Notes (2002)

www.cypherspace.org Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 10.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-09-18

Needs:5 submissions

564max pts

HOWTO: Be more productive (2005)

www.aaronsw.com Essays & writing 14 submissions · 14 people · 18.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-10-24

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

259max pts

Fixing Unix Filenames (2012)

www.dwheeler.com Essays & writing 15 submissions · 15 people · 17.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-03-17

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

107max pts

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)

journals.plos.org Essays & writing 12 submissions · 12 people · 8.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-09-24

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

231max pts

Dunning-Kruger and other memes (2015)

danluu.com Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 11.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-11-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

243max pts

Suspicious Discontinuities

danluu.com Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-06-27

Needs:5 submissions

644max pts

The Bitter Lesson

www.incompleteideas.net Essays & writing 37 submissions · 37 people · 7.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-02-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

152max pts

Books and lectures don't work

andymatuschak.org Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 5.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-09-28

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

195max pts

Dynamic Languages Are Static Languages (2011)

existentialtype.wordpress.com Essays & writing 15 submissions · 15 people · 13.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2015-07-22

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

54max pts

Three Tribes of Programming (2017)

josephg.com Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 9.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-06-26

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

270max pts

We only hire the trendiest

danluu.com Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 5.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-10-27

Needs:5 submissions

1615max pts

Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)

www.cs.unm.edu Essays & writing 11 submissions · 9 people · 16.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-03-03

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

250max pts

The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world

www.bbc.com Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 6.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-01-25

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

316max pts

Why Most Unit Testing is Waste [pdf]

www.rbcs-us.com Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 5.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-06-28

Needs:5 submissions

306max pts

IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

medium.com Essays & writing 10 submissions · 8 people · 6.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-11-19

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

304max pts

Why Hypercard Had to Die (2011)

www.loper-os.org Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 9.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-04-09

Needs:5 submissions

206max pts

Lockdown – The coming war on general-purpose computing (2012)

boingboing.net Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 13.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-05-09

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

298max pts

How to pick startup ideas

www.defmacro.org Essays & writing 7 submissions · 7 people · 7.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2016-11-07

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

385max pts

What If OpenDocument Used SQLite?

www.sqlite.org Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 8.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-09-04

Needs:5 submissions

445max pts

If PHP Were British

www.addedbytes.com Essays & writing 11 submissions · 11 people · 5.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2013-03-26

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

347max pts

Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

josephg.com Essays & writing 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-02-13

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

1519max pts

30 years later, QBasic is still the best

www.nicolasbize.com Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 7.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-01-17

Needs:5 submissions

493max pts

Hyrum's Law

www.hyrumslaw.com Essays & writing 12 submissions · 11 people · 7.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-01

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

146max pts

Fizz Buzz in Tensorflow

joelgrus.com Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 6.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-02-12

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

378max pts

Chesterton's Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking

fs.blog Essays & writing 10 submissions · 10 people · 4.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-12-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

205max pts

How to lose time and money

www.paulgraham.com Essays & writing 8 submissions · 8 people · 13.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2011-11-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

467max pts

B-Heap vs. Binary Heap (2010)

queue.acm.org Essays & writing 11 submissions · 11 people · 15.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-03-18

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

273max pts

D J Bernstein – The IPv6 mess

cr.yp.to Essays & writing 8 submissions · 6 people · 17.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-08-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

93max pts

Organizational Skills Beat Algorithmic Wizardry (2013)

prog21.dadgum.com Essays & writing 13 submissions · 13 people · 13.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-11-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

193max pts

95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

danluu.com Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-12-07

Needs:5 submissions

444max pts

A history of branch prediction

danluu.com Essays & writing 9 submissions · 8 people · 8.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-07-01

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

300max pts

The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (2016)

medium.com Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 7.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-08-29

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

262max pts