Computer science

Links about computer science that Hacker News readers keep rediscovering.

Hall of Fame: 88
Candidates: 159
Types: 8
Median span: 8.0 yrs

Browse Computer science by type

Every link below is about computer science and belongs to the selected type.

8 types

Strongest Hall records

88 items

Compiler Explorer

godbolt.org Tools, games & demos 32 submissions · 31 people · 13.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-08 Resurfaced 2022-10-16

541max pts

Crafting Interpreters

craftinginterpreters.com Books & learning 16 submissions · 15 people · 9.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-07 Resurfaced 2026-01-14

623max pts

WebGL Water

madebyevan.com Tools, games & demos 17 submissions · 16 people · 13.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2014-02 Resurfaced 2025-05-10

467max pts

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

169max 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

Advent of Code 2021

adventofcode.com Tools, games & demos 24 submissions · 22 people · 10.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-12 Resurfaced 2023-11-28

725max 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

Raft Visualization

thesecretlivesofdata.com Tools, games & demos 29 submissions · 29 people · 10.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-08 Resurfaced 2024-09-27

411max 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

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

409max pts

The Philosophy of Computer Science (2017)

plato.stanford.edu Reference 12 submissions · 12 people · 15.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-03 Resurfaced 2023-02-20

330max pts

Data Structure Visualizations

www.cs.usfca.edu Tools, games & demos 9 submissions · 9 people · 10.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-10 Resurfaced 2021-07-06

514max pts

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

560max pts

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

588max pts

Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)

www.jsoftware.com Research & data 11 submissions · 11 people · 14.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-04 Resurfaced 2025-04-25

322max pts

Dynamicland 2024

dynamicland.org Reference 13 submissions · 12 people · 8.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-04 Resurfaced 2024-09-04

590max pts

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

434max 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 $5000 Compression Challenge

www.patrickcraig.co.uk Essays & writing 8 submissions · 8 people · 13.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-03 Resurfaced 2024-11-23

323max pts

Visualizing Algorithms (2014)

bost.ocks.org Tools, games & demos 15 submissions · 15 people · 11.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-07 Resurfaced 2022-07-01

1557max pts

Terrain rendering in fewer than 20 lines of code

github.com Software & code 9 submissions · 8 people · 7.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-03 Resurfaced 2025-01-03

793max pts

Dear ImGui – Bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++

github.com Software & code 15 submissions · 12 people · 9.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-11 Resurfaced 2023-12-20

284max 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

Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction

worrydream.com Essays & writing 14 submissions · 11 people · 11.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-05 Resurfaced 2021-09-11

733max pts

Rich Programmer Food

steve-yegge.blogspot.com Essays & writing 18 submissions · 18 people · 17.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-05 Resurfaced 2016-05-23

217max pts

Make a Lisp

github.com Software & code 11 submissions · 11 people · 9.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2017-09 Resurfaced 2021-04-24

361max pts

Computer Science from the Bottom Up (2013)

www.bottomupcs.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 12.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-04 Resurfaced 2023-09-10

516max pts

Building a Modern Computer from First Principles

www.nand2tetris.org Books & learning 12 submissions · 12 people · 13.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-12 Resurfaced 2023-12-22

667max pts

Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

worrydream.com Essays & writing 16 submissions · 16 people · 11.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-07 Resurfaced 2023-10-03

1080max pts

Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson

jeffe.cs.illinois.edu Books & learning 10 submissions · 10 people · 7.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-02 Resurfaced 2023-11-13

1463max pts

Learn how to design large-scale systems

github.com Reference 13 submissions · 13 people · 8.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-12 Resurfaced 2023-10-29

1273max pts

WebGL Fluid Simulation

paveldogreat.github.io Tools, games & demos 6 submissions · 6 people · 5.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-07 Resurfaced 2024-12-29

868max pts

NandGame – Build a Computer from Scratch

nandgame.com Tools, games & demos 13 submissions · 12 people · 7.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-04 Resurfaced 2022-04-16

627max pts

PathFinding.js

qiao.github.io Tools, games & demos 12 submissions · 11 people · 7.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-03 Resurfaced 2019-03-02

337max pts

MapSCII – Braille and ASCII map renderer for the console

github.com Software & code 7 submissions · 7 people · 8.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-04 Resurfaced 2025-09-18

389max pts

“C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success” – Dennis Ritchie

www.bell-labs.com Research & data 10 submissions · 10 people · 7.6 years

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

255max pts

The Power of Prolog

www.metalevel.at Books & learning 6 submissions · 6 people · 8.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-01 Resurfaced 2022-06-06

381max pts

Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers.

prog21.dadgum.com Essays & writing 5 submissions · 5 people · 17.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-04 Resurfaced 2026-04-15

509max pts

Database “sharding” came from Ultima Online? (2009)

www.raphkoster.com Essays & writing 8 submissions · 6 people · 6.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-04 Resurfaced 2024-08-25

294max pts

The “Talk”

www.smbc-comics.com Audio, video & images 15 submissions · 9 people · 9.3 years

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

877max 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

The Future of Programming

worrydream.com Reference 9 submissions · 9 people · 12.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-07 Resurfaced 2025-07-31

614max pts

C4 – C in 4 functions

github.com Software & code 7 submissions · 7 people · 10.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-08 Resurfaced 2023-08-26

517max pts

OCaml for the Masses (2011)

queue.acm.org Essays & writing 9 submissions · 9 people · 8.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-11 Resurfaced 2018-11-26

304max pts

Learn Rust by writing a small OS

os.phil-opp.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 8.0 years

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

534max pts

Visual Information Theory (2015)

colah.github.io Books & learning 9 submissions · 8 people · 10.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-07 Resurfaced 2019-07-24

543max pts

Automerge: JSON-like data structure for building collaborative apps

github.com Software & code 11 submissions · 11 people · 6.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-02 Resurfaced 2022-02-21

409max pts

Algorithms and Data Structures Explained and Implemented in JavaScript

github.com Software & code 10 submissions · 9 people · 4.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-10 Resurfaced 2023-04-07

483max pts

What's Functional Programming All About?

www.lihaoyi.com Essays & writing 10 submissions · 7 people · 7.6 years

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

341max pts

C Compiler from Scratch

github.com Software & code 11 submissions · 11 people · 6.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-03 Resurfaced 2026-03-24

484max pts

Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)

blog.fogus.me Essays & writing 7 submissions · 7 people · 9.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2016-10 Resurfaced 2016-12-01

467max pts

Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (2001)

github.com Books & learning 5 submissions · 5 people · 8.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-11 Resurfaced 2021-01-15

307max pts

Fibonacci Hashing: The Optimization That the World Forgot

probablydance.com Essays & writing 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-04 Resurfaced 2025-04-14

405max pts

Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete

arxiv.org Research & data 11 submissions · 11 people · 6.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-12 Resurfaced 2023-12-14

192max pts

The Z3 Theorem Prover released under MIT license

github.com Software & code 10 submissions · 6 people · 10.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-06 Resurfaced 2025-12-10

304max pts

Distributed Systems Reading List

dancres.github.io Reference 8 submissions · 8 people · 10.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-10 Resurfaced 2024-10-19

554max pts

How Recursion Got into Programming (2014)

vanemden.wordpress.com Essays & writing 8 submissions · 8 people · 8.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-05 Resurfaced 2022-10-07

127max pts

F* – A Proof-Oriented Programming Language

www.fstar-lang.org Software & code 8 submissions · 8 people · 8.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-05 Resurfaced 2024-12-25

264max pts

Algorithms for Modern Hardware

en.algorithmica.org Books & learning 10 submissions · 9 people · 4.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-06 Resurfaced 2024-03-14

344max pts

Recently resurfaced in computer science

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

Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers.

prog21.dadgum.com Essays & writing 5 submissions · 5 people · 17.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-04 Resurfaced 2026-04-15

509max pts

Galactic Algorithm

en.wikipedia.org Reference 9 submissions · 8 people · 6.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-12 Resurfaced 2026-04-13

382max pts

C Compiler from Scratch

github.com Software & code 11 submissions · 11 people · 6.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-03 Resurfaced 2026-03-24

484max pts

Crafting Interpreters

craftinginterpreters.com Books & learning 16 submissions · 15 people · 9.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-07 Resurfaced 2026-01-14

623max pts

Candidates

Browse 159 candidates

Best Paper Awards in Computer Science over the past 25 years

jeffhuang.com Research & data 19 submissions · 15 people · 15.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-01-03

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

192max 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

143max 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

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

Show HN: The Deadlock Empire – Slay dragons, master concurrency

deadlockempire.github.io Tools, games & demos 16 submissions · 15 people · 8.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-07-08

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

269max pts

Pink Trombone

dood.al Tools, games & demos 9 submissions · 9 people · 8.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-01-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

575max pts

A collection of things that are Turing-complete by accident (2013)

beza1e1.tuxen.de Reference 12 submissions · 12 people · 11.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-04-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

244max 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

Feynman Computer Science Lecture – Hardware, Software, Heuristics (1985) [video]

www.youtube.com Audio, video & images 16 submissions · 16 people · 11.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-06-03

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

156max 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

Halide, a language for image processing and computational photography

halide-lang.org Software & code 15 submissions · 15 people · 12.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2018-12-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

194max pts

X86 mov is turing complete: mov-only compiler

github.com Software & code 14 submissions · 14 people · 10.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-08-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

238max 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

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

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 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project

nothings.org Essays & writing 6 submissions · 6 people · 14.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-01-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

159max pts

VisuAlgo – visualising data structures and algorithms through animation

visualgo.net Tools, games & demos 10 submissions · 10 people · 7.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-03-16

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

280max 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

Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity (2011) [pdf]

www.scottaaronson.com Research & data 8 submissions · 8 people · 11.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-08-04

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

177max pts

A Pixel Is Not A Little Square (1995) [pdf]

alvyray.com Research & data 7 submissions · 6 people · 10.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-04-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

143max pts

Four Column ASCII

garbagecollected.org Essays & writing 4 submissions · 4 people · 9.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-02-15

Needs:5 submissions

569max pts

Langton's ant

en.wikipedia.org Reference 7 submissions · 7 people · 13.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-05-17

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

118max pts

Creating a QR Code step by step

www.nayuki.io Tools, games & demos 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-11-17

Needs:5 submissions

329max pts

Tiny C Compiler

bellard.org Software & code 4 submissions · 4 people · 17.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2026-02-07

Needs:5 submissions

307max pts

Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998)

flint.cs.yale.edu Essays & writing 6 submissions · 6 people · 10.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-04-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

241max pts

Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours

en.wikibooks.org Books & learning 8 submissions · 8 people · 14.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-10-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

124max 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

Recursive Drawing

recursivedrawing.com Tools, games & demos 4 submissions · 4 people · 11.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-10-30

Needs:5 submissions

694max 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

The Yoda of Silicon Valley

www.nytimes.com Essays & writing 6 submissions · 6 people · 6.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-08-01

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

976max pts

A Brief History of the UUID

segment.com Essays & writing 6 submissions · 6 people · 7.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-02-03

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

304max pts

Open Data Structures

opendatastructures.org Books & learning 9 submissions · 9 people · 11.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2016-12-08

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

220max pts

Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes

www.cleveralgorithms.com Books & learning 10 submissions · 8 people · 8.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-11-19

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

189max pts

Bloom Filters by Example

llimllib.github.io Books & learning 7 submissions · 7 people · 8.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-06-29

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

247max pts

The Book of Shaders

thebookofshaders.com Books & learning 9 submissions · 7 people · 6.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-06-26

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

238max pts

Anatomy of a Program in Memory

duartes.org Essays & writing 10 submissions · 7 people · 12.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-08-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

134max pts