Top all-time · #636
Anton Zhiyanov
Personal blog · antonz.org · on HN as nalgeonprogramming
Anton Zhiyanov's personal blog at antonz.org covers programming. Since 2021, 97 different Hacker News readers have linked it 264 times, most often “SQLite is not a toy database”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Anton Zhiyanov's antonz.org for interactive, runnable explainers and release-note tours of SQLite, Go and SQL, plus the sqlean extensions.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called a favourite author, a good starting point for SQLite extensions, and a great explanation of upserts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Everything about Go, SQL, and software in general.
Most-linked posts?
- SQLite is not a toy database6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-03-25
- Resetting Timers in Go5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-07-05
- UUIDv7 in 20 Languages5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-06-15
- Grep by Example: Interactive Guide4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-03-23
- Go 1.24 Interactive Tour4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-01-13
- Interfaces and Traits in C4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-22
- Trying chDB, an embeddable ClickHouse engine4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-12-11
- Porting Go's io package to C4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-03-25
- Writing a Package Manager4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-08-08
- JSON evolution in Go: from v1 to v24 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-06-22
What Hacker News says?
If you find the official release notes a bit dry, I've made an interactive version: https://antonz.org/go-1-22
Comment linking /go-1-22
on “Go 1.22”Submitted SQLite is not a toy database as a story · 986 points
HN discussionCame here to post this. I’m wondering how Redka will compare with Postgres (and Redis) in terms of performance though. Edit: https://antonz.org/redka/#performance
Comment linking /redka/
on “Redis is fast – I'll cache in Postgres”Submitted Go Concurrency Distilled as a story · 402 points
HN discussionIf you find the official release notes a bit dry, I've made an interactive version: https://antonz.org/sqlite-3-45
Comment linking /sqlite-3-45
on “SQLite 3.45 released with JSONB support”Submitted How to make a Python package in 2021 as a story · 396 points
HN discussionIf you're going to use SQLite as an application file format, you should: 1. Enable the secure_delete pragma < https://antonz.org/sqlite-secure-delete/ > so that when your user deletes something, the data is actually erased. Otherwise, when a user shares one of your application's files with someone else, the recipient could recover information that the sender thought they had deleted. 2. Enable the options described…
Comment linking /sqlite-secure-delete/
on “What If OpenDocument Used SQLite?”Submitted Python Standard Library changes in recent years as a story · 277 points
HN discussionI like the "does the problem justify the solution's complexity" question. The deserialization performance improvement seems like an actually important benefit though. Also https://antonz.org/go-json-v2/#marshalwrite-and-unmarshalrea... not completely sure but maybe combining dec := json.NewDecoder(in) dec.Decode(&bob) to just json.UnmarshalRead(in, &bob) is nicer...mostly the performance benefit though
Comment linking /go-json-v2/
on “A new experimental Go API for JSON”Submitted Show HN: High-precision date/time in SQLite as a story · 274 points
HN discussionInteractive tour of new features: https://antonz.org/go-1-25/
Comment linking /go-1-25/
on “Go 1.25 Release Notes”Submitted SQLite is not a toy database (2021) as a story · 267 points
HN discussionI implemented this in pure Python a few days ago in case anyone finds it helpful, here it is: https://gist.github.com/pirate/7e44387c12f434a77072d50c52a3d... My implementation supports graceful degradation between nanosecond scale resolution, microsecond, and millisecond, by using 12 bits for each and filling up the leftmost bits of rand_a and rand_b. Not all environments provide high resolution system clocks with n…
Comment linking /uuidv7/
on “Postgres UUIDv7 and per-back end monotonicity”Submitted Go Proposal: Secret Mode as a story · 236 points
HN discussionHere are my favorites: - Jacob Kaplan-Moss ( https://jacobian.org/ ) [Engineering leadership, OSS] - Anton Zhiyanov ( https://antonz.org/ ) [SQL, Go, Python] - Julia Evans ( https://jvns.ca/ ) [SQL, Linux, Python, Go, Web] - Brandur Leach ( https://brandur.org/ ) [Postgres, Go, Ruby, Web] - Brandon Rhodes ( https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/ ) [Python, Astronomy, Linux] - Nathanial J Smith ( https://vorpus.org/blog/ )…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite blog in 2024?”Submitted Write the damn code as a story · 233 points
HN discussionIf you find the official release notes a bit dry (they really are), I've prepared an interactive version with lots of examples: - Iterators (range / types / pull / slices / maps). - Timer changes (garbage collection and reset/stop behavior). - Canonical values with the `unique` package. - HTTP cookie handling. - Copying directories. - Slices and atomics changes. https://antonz.org/go-1-23
Comment linking /go-1-23
on “Go 1.23 Released”Submitted JSON and Virtual Columns in SQLite as a story · 232 points
HN discussionAnd a different take on the changes: https://antonz.org/go-1-23/
Comment linking /go-1-23/
on “Go 1.23 Released”Submitted In-browser code playgrounds as a story · 202 points
HN discussionIntegrating live code editors within docs and tutorials is great. Another example of this I saw recently using SQLite (compiled to Wasm) in the browser: https://docs.sqlitecloud.io/docs/sqlite And if you ever want something similar for more general backend APIs (without relying on Wasm or the browser to run the software), https://codapi.org/ looks very slick e.g. as demonstrated in https://antonz.org/sql-upsert/ - d…
Comment linking /sql-upsert/
on “Half a century of SQL”Submitted How to create a 1M record table with a single query as a story · 180 points
HN discussionAnother way to store booleans that can be worth mentioning is to add (or not) a parameter in the url without a value. To reuse the example from https://antonz.org/storing-state/#boolean-value {"search": "potatoes", "popular": true} can be serialized as ?search=potatoes&popular
Comment linking /storing-state/
on “Storing State in the URL”Submitted Storing State in the URL as a story · 128 points
HN discussionThis is a great idea! On a related note, I love how nalgeon [0] has interactive blog posts [1] on SQLite release notes using WASM magic [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nalgeon [1] - https://antonz.org/sqlite-3-45/
Comment linking /sqlite-3-45/
on “Interactive SQLite Documentation: Experiment with Queries in Real-Time”Submitted How Python List Works as a story · 82 points
HN discussionEducative also has a very strange (to say the least) way of interacting with authors: https://antonz.org/educative
Comment linking /educative
on “Tell HN: Educative.io auto-renews without warning, refuses to provide refunds”Submitted SQLite is not a toy database as a story · 67 points
HN discussionI think the problem here is with the query, not the language. You can immediately improve its maintainability and readability by using CTEs. https://antonz.org/cte/
Comment linking /cte/
on “I don't need your query language”Submitted I don't need your query language as a story · 62 points
HN discussion
