Tutorials & guides

Tutorials & guides that Hacker News readers keep rediscovering.

Hall of Fame: 126
Candidates: 218
Topics: 16
Median span: 7.3 yrs

Topics in Tutorials & guides

16 topics

Software engineering 119 links 44 Hall · 75 Candidates Computer science 64 links 21 Hall · 43 Candidates Mathematics & science 27 links 10 Hall · 17 Candidates Hardware & electronics 25 links 7 Hall · 18 Candidates Security & privacy 19 links 5 Hall · 14 Candidates Web & internet 19 links 8 Hall · 11 Candidates Design & creativity 15 links 5 Hall · 10 Candidates Education & learning 14 links 8 Hall · 6 Candidates AI & data 12 links 4 Hall · 8 Candidates Work & careers 9 links 3 Hall · 6 Candidates Computer games 7 links 3 Hall · 4 Candidates Economics & business 5 links 3 Hall · 2 Candidates Culture & media 4 links 3 Hall · 1 Candidates Society & policy 3 links 1 Hall · 2 Candidates Medicine & health 1 link 1 Hall · 0 Candidates Space & transportation 1 link 0 Hall · 1 Candidates

Strongest Hall records

126 items

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

norvig.com Books & learning 32 submissions · 32 people · 18.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-06 Resurfaced 2025-07-26

586max pts

Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

www.w3.org Books & learning 24 submissions · 21 people · 16.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-05 Resurfaced 2023-03-03

387max pts

Hexagonal Grids (2013)

www.redblobgames.com Books & learning 16 submissions · 16 people · 12.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-09 Resurfaced 2026-02-03

709max pts

The Lost Art of C Structure Packing

www.catb.org Books & learning 17 submissions · 15 people · 12.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-08 Resurfaced 2022-04-27

335max pts

How to Write a Spelling Corrector

norvig.com Books & learning 21 submissions · 21 people · 16.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-09 Resurfaced 2022-03-06

401max pts

How Not to Sort by Average Rating (2009)

www.evanmiller.org Books & learning 18 submissions · 17 people · 15.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-08 Resurfaced 2024-10-25

383max pts

Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods (2013)

www.somethingsimilar.com Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 12.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-08 Resurfaced 2024-09-02

386max pts

Linux ate my RAM

www.linuxatemyram.com Books & learning 12 submissions · 12 people · 12.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-02 Resurfaced 2023-10-09

245max pts

Tutorial: How to use Git in a team development environment

nvie.com Books & learning 17 submissions · 17 people · 12.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-10 Resurfaced 2023-09-07

199max pts

Oh Shit, Git?

ohshitgit.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 8.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-01 Resurfaced 2025-01-16

1209max pts

Let’s Build a Simple Database (2017)

cstack.github.io Books & learning 16 submissions · 15 people · 8.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-07 Resurfaced 2023-05-03

783max pts

0.30000000000000004

0.30000000000000004.com Books & learning 16 submissions · 15 people · 9.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-04 Resurfaced 2022-06-20

768max pts

Beej's Guide to Network Programming

beej.us Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 17.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-02 Resurfaced 2023-10-11

993max pts

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

matt.might.net Books & learning 16 submissions · 16 people · 14.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2013-03 Resurfaced 2021-11-07

319max pts

Advanced programming languages (2009)

matt.might.net Books & learning 12 submissions · 10 people · 10.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-06 Resurfaced 2020-05-05

219max pts

Understanding the working of X11 from the ground up (2017)

magcius.github.io Books & learning 10 submissions · 9 people · 8.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-09 Resurfaced 2023-01-09

456max pts

Modern Microprocessors – A 90-Minute Guide (2001-2016)

www.lighterra.com Books & learning 14 submissions · 11 people · 14.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-10 Resurfaced 2021-05-02

443max pts

How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves (2009)

www.georgehart.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 14.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2014-05 Resurfaced 2022-03-06

415max pts

Chemistry of Cast-Iron Seasoning (2010)

sherylcanter.com Books & learning 15 submissions · 7 people · 14.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-12 Resurfaced 2022-06-02

348max pts

Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

lcamtuf.coredump.cx Books & learning 17 submissions · 16 people · 7.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-11 Resurfaced 2020-11-11

575max pts

The magic of the Kalman filter, in pictures

www.bzarg.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 8.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-01 Resurfaced 2024-04-03

481max pts

H.264 is Magic

sidbala.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 8 people · 7.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-03 Resurfaced 2024-06-14

1228max pts

The XY Problem (2014)

xyproblem.info Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 10.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-06 Resurfaced 2025-12-04

319max pts

Essential C (2003) [pdf]

cslibrary.stanford.edu Books & learning 10 submissions · 10 people · 13.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-12 Resurfaced 2022-03-05 archived copy

291max pts

Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day

www.righto.com Books & learning 12 submissions · 12 people · 10.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-12 Resurfaced 2021-02-15

653max pts

Hacker's Guide to Neural Networks

karpathy.github.io Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 9.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-07 Resurfaced 2019-01-06

450max pts

Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 6.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-09 Resurfaced 2023-05-14

2106max pts

Introduction to the A* Algorithm (2014)

www.redblobgames.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 10.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-12 Resurfaced 2025-06-17

509max pts

Functors, applicatives, and monads in pictures

adit.io Books & learning 15 submissions · 14 people · 8.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-09 Resurfaced 2021-10-19

200max pts

An Introduction to Reactive Programming

gist.github.com Books & learning 16 submissions · 16 people · 10.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-02 Resurfaced 2020-10-25

455max pts

What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell

dev.stephendiehl.com Books & learning 11 submissions · 9 people · 7.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-09 Resurfaced 2020-04-11 archived copy

306max pts

Lisp as the Maxwell Equations of Software (2012)

www.michaelnielsen.org Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 12.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-08 Resurfaced 2022-11-08

196max pts

WTFPython: Exploring and understanding Python through surprising snippets

github.com Books & learning 14 submissions · 13 people · 7.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-08 Resurfaced 2023-08-27

460max pts

Accounting for Computer Scientists

martin.kleppmann.com Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 14.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-10 Resurfaced 2026-01-02

520max pts

What every computer science major should know (2011)

matt.might.net Books & learning 17 submissions · 17 people · 14.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-07 Resurfaced 2019-07-16

540max pts

Coroutines in C (Simon Tatham, 2000)

www.chiark.greenend.org.uk Books & learning 18 submissions · 16 people · 14.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-02 Resurfaced 2024-02-25

307max pts

The Art of Command Line (2015)

github.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 8.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-05 Resurfaced 2022-11-24

597max pts

Build Your Own Text Editor

viewsourcecode.org Books & learning 12 submissions · 11 people · 7.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-01 Resurfaced 2022-11-13

1275max pts

The theory of relativity in words of four letters or less

www.muppetlabs.com Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 17.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-04 Resurfaced 2025-04-14

240max pts

Main is usually a function, so when is it not? (2015)

jroweboy.github.io Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 8.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-09 Resurfaced 2023-08-08

338max pts

My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

jeffhuang.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 5 people · 5.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-02 Resurfaced 2025-12-11

1545max pts

An Intuitive Guide to Linear Algebra (2012)

betterexplained.com Books & learning 5 submissions · 5 people · 11.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-06 Resurfaced 2022-03-31

709max pts

Python for Lisp Programmers (2000)

norvig.com Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 15.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-02 Resurfaced 2021-02-22

133max pts

Go by Example

gobyexample.com Books & learning 10 submissions · 10 people · 11.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-03 Resurfaced 2022-05-07

392max pts

The First Few Milliseconds of an HTTPS Connection (2009)

www.moserware.com Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 11.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-07 Resurfaced 2020-10-20

549max pts

Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued (2012)

www.kalzumeus.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 11.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-09 Resurfaced 2023-07-02

596max pts

Build an 8-bit computer from scratch (2016)

eater.net Books & learning 7 submissions · 7 people · 7.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-10 Resurfaced 2025-03-31

489max pts

Tcl the Misunderstood (2006)

antirez.com Books & learning 7 submissions · 7 people · 15.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-04 Resurfaced 2024-10-09

182max pts

Git for Computer Scientists

eagain.net Books & learning 12 submissions · 11 people · 17.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-06 Resurfaced 2021-06-13

259max pts

A guide to implementing 2D platformers

higherorderfun.com Books & learning 12 submissions · 8 people · 12.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-05 Resurfaced 2024-09-27

307max pts

An Interactive Guide to the Fourier Transform (2012)

betterexplained.com Books & learning 6 submissions · 6 people · 12.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-12 Resurfaced 2025-12-02

301max pts

Why Python Is Slow: Looking Under the Hood

jakevdp.github.io Books & learning 6 submissions · 6 people · 9.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-08 Resurfaced 2017-10-25

220max pts

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks

karpathy.github.io Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 10.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-02 Resurfaced 2023-08-28

913max pts

To become a good C programmer (2011)

fabiensanglard.net Books & learning 7 submissions · 7 people · 14.3 years

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

364max pts

Use plaintext email

useplaintext.email Books & learning 5 submissions · 5 people · 5.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-06 Resurfaced 2025-06-28

337max pts

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good

learnyouahaskell.com Books & learning 6 submissions · 6 people · 9.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-01 Resurfaced 2018-08-21

322max pts

Open guide to equity compensation

github.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 6 people · 9.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-04 Resurfaced 2025-04-13

656max pts

Beginner's guide to longevity research

www.ldeming.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 7 people · 4.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-08 Resurfaced 2022-02-27

361max pts

What every coder should know about gamma

blog.johnnovak.net Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 9.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-11 Resurfaced 2026-06-13

560max pts

Network protocols for anyone who knows a programming language

www.destroyallsoftware.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 7.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-08 Resurfaced 2024-12-16

635max pts

Recently resurfaced in tutorials & guides

latest 20+ point return

What every coder should know about gamma

blog.johnnovak.net Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 9.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-11 Resurfaced 2026-06-13

560max pts

Guerrilla guide to CNC machining, mold making, and resin casting (2015)

lcamtuf.coredump.cx Books & learning 5 submissions · 4 people · 13.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-04 Resurfaced 2026-04-04

433max pts

Hexagonal Grids (2013)

www.redblobgames.com Books & learning 16 submissions · 16 people · 12.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-09 Resurfaced 2026-02-03

709max pts

Animated Knots

www.animatedknots.com Books & learning 5 submissions · 5 people · 6.7 years

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

702max pts

Accounting for Computer Scientists

martin.kleppmann.com Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 14.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-10 Resurfaced 2026-01-02

520max pts

Candidates

Browse 218 candidates

The TTY demystified (2008)

www.linusakesson.net Books & learning 32 submissions · 32 people · 16.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-26

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

243max pts

Seeing Theory (2017)

seeing-theory.brown.edu Books & learning 15 submissions · 15 people · 7.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-02-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

526max pts

A Modern JavaScript Tutorial

javascript.info Books & learning 14 submissions · 13 people · 14.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-05-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

893max pts

A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

www.moserware.com Books & learning 24 submissions · 16 people · 14.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-02-03

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

267max pts

Let’s Build a Compiler (1995)

compilers.iecc.com Books & learning 12 submissions · 12 people · 18.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-12-26

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

247max pts

(How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python))

norvig.com Books & learning 15 submissions · 14 people · 11.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-02-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

222max pts

Gallery of Processor Cache Effects

igoro.com Books & learning 13 submissions · 12 people · 16.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-07-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

153max pts

The Raft Consensus Algorithm (2015)

raft.github.io Books & learning 15 submissions · 13 people · 9.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-13

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

343max pts

Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2017

github.com Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 8.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-01-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

261max pts

The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling

www.garlikov.com Books & learning 11 submissions · 9 people · 18.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-03-06

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

253max pts

The Clockwise/Spiral Rule of C declarations

c-faq.com Books & learning 13 submissions · 11 people · 14.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-01-01

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

225max pts

Interactive Vim Tutorial

www.openvim.com Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 11.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-10-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

237max pts

Use the Unofficial Bash Strict Mode (Unless You Love Debugging)

redsymbol.net Books & learning 17 submissions · 17 people · 11.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-22

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

180max pts

Sudoku Solving

norvig.com Books & learning 15 submissions · 14 people · 17.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-11-04

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

202max pts

Easy 6502 – How to get started writing 6502 assembly language

skilldrick.github.io Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 11.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-02-07

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

222max pts

Don't ask to ask, just ask (2019)

dontasktoask.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 6.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-21

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

247max pts

How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary

samizdat.mines.edu Books & learning 11 submissions · 11 people · 7.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2015-05-12

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

162max pts

What every programmer should know about memory [pdf]

people.freebsd.org Books & learning 15 submissions · 15 people · 10.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-02-05

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

203max pts

Homebrew Cray-1A

www.chrisfenton.com Books & learning 10 submissions · 9 people · 13.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-11-01

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

228max pts

Donut math: how donut.c works

www.a1k0n.net Books & learning 12 submissions · 12 people · 11.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-09-17

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

204max pts

Understanding Clojure's Persistent Vectors, pt. 1 (2013)

hypirion.com Books & learning 15 submissions · 12 people · 12.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-04-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

114max pts

So you want to be a consultant? (2005)

unixwiz.net Books & learning 10 submissions · 8 people · 17.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-08-20

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

193max pts

Baby's First Garbage Collector

journal.stuffwithstuff.com Books & learning 11 submissions · 10 people · 11.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-08-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

217max pts

/dev/zero has infinite electrons and /dev/null has an infinite appetite for them

www.linusakesson.net Books & learning 17 submissions · 10 people · 14.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-03-13

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

250max pts

The Illustrated Transformer

jalammar.github.io Books & learning 10 submissions · 10 people · 7.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-12-22

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

475max pts

Ian Knot (2003)

www.fieggen.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 17.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-07-04

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

154max pts

Optimizing HTTPS performance

istlsfastyet.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 8.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2016-01-31

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

150max pts

On undoing, fixing, or removing commits in git

sethrobertson.github.io Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 9.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-01-30

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

157max pts

How to Fold a Julia Fractal

acko.net Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 11.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-02-20

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

231max pts

Lisp Koans

github.com Books & learning 7 submissions · 7 people · 11.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-11-28

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

156max pts

A Regular Expression Matcher (2007)

www.cs.princeton.edu Books & learning 10 submissions · 10 people · 12.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-08-25

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

132max pts

The Common Lisp Cookbook

lispcookbook.github.io Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 7.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-05-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

264max pts

Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com Books & learning 4 submissions · 4 people · 4.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-04-25

Needs:5 submissions

635max pts

A visual introduction to machine learning (2015)

www.r2d3.us Books & learning 13 submissions · 13 people · 6.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-03-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

241max pts

How to Study Mathematics (2017)

www.math.uh.edu Books & learning 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-12-01

Needs:5 submissions

661max pts

Learn just a little Awk (2010)

gregable.com Books & learning 4 submissions · 4 people · 9.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-09-28

Needs:5 submissions

684max pts

An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms

www.jezzamon.com Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 5.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-11-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

421max pts

SBCL: The Assembly Code Breadboard (2014)

pvk.ca Books & learning 10 submissions · 6 people · 9.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-05-20

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

161max pts

Index 1.6B Keys with Automata and Rust (2015)

blog.burntsushi.net Books & learning 11 submissions · 10 people · 9.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-08-20

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

213max pts

Implement a programming language from scratch

matt.might.net Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 15.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-05-11

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

136max pts