Top all-time · #800
Tom Novelli
Personal blog · beyondloom.com · on HN as RodgerTheGreatprogramminggames
Tom Novelli writes Beyond Loom Blog, a personal blog at beyondloom.com about programming and games. Since 2020, 82 different Hacker News readers have linked it 213 times, most often “Decker – A HyperCard Replacement”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this site mostly for Decker, a HyperCard-style 1-bit tool, plus the Lil language, array-language and APL writing, and posts on dithering and CHIP-8.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Blog posts called really good; a query-syntax post a nice introduction; a dithering post a great visual explanation.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Decker – A HyperCard Replacement14 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2022-10-30
- Atkinson Dithering (2021)9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-05-06
- Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-10-28
- Stages of Denial7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-08-06
- A Multimedia Sketchpad6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-12-12
- Lil: A Scripting Language6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-10-30
- Ranking of Fruits: Sorting in JavaScript, K, and Lil4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-01-10
- End of Octojam (2023)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-06-28
- K Slices, K Dices4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-01-14
- Decker: A reincarnation of HyperCard with 1-bit graphics4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-05-07
What Hacker News says?
A pen-tablet with a transflective display and a commodity OS is very compelling. I've been working for a few years on a "multimedia sketchpad"[0] application with a primarily grayscale UI that screams for a device like this. I imagine the browser port might already work acceptably, but perhaps I'll revisit a native Android port with the Daylight in mind... [0] http://beyondloom.com/decker/
Comment linking /decker/
on “Daylight Computer – New 60fps e-paper tablet”Submitted Decker: A reincarnation of HyperCard with 1-bit graphics as a story · 280 points
HN discussionThanks, Bill. Rest in Peace. I was amazed by Bill's software seeing it on a Mac back then - MacPaint mostly, then HyperCard. I was not even 10, but I was already programming, and spent hours trying to figure out how to implement MacPaint's Lasso on my humble ZX Spectrum. (With some success, but not quite as elegant...) If you want to experience HyperCard, John Earnest (RodgerTheGreat on HN[0]) built Decker[1] that r…
Comment linking /decker/
on “Bill Atkinson has died”Submitted Atkinson Dithering (2021) as a story · 236 points
HN discussionhttp://beyondloom.com/decker/
Comment linking /decker/
on “An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)”Submitted Stages of Denial as a story · 225 points
HN discussionCome check out some of the array languages[1,2,3], or perhaps the retro-computing comfy vibes of a system like Decker[4]. Some of us still appreciate code as poetry. [1]: https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/ [2]: https://www.uiua.org/ [3]: https://code.kx.com/q/learn/tour/ [4]: https://beyondloom.com/decker/tour.html
Comment linking /decker/tour.html
on “Don't DRY Your Code Prematurely”Submitted Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS as a story · 215 points
HN discussionFor the record, Decker uses a 4-bit palette configured from a 24-bit gamut: http://beyondloom.com/decker/color.html Reflowing UIs to suit varying aspect ratios is a challenging puzzle that Decker presently doesn't touch, though I do have some ideas for the future. If decks were embedded as inline "applets" of interactive content within a fluid document container (markdown, gemtext, etc) I think reflow would be consi…
Comment linking /decker/color.html
on “Web Browser Engineering (2021)”Submitted Your First THINK C Program as a story · 193 points
HN discussionPerhaps you would enjoy Decker: http://beyondloom.com/decker/
Comment linking /decker/
on “Show HN: I made a free animator. Think Adobe Illustrator but for animation”Submitted Decker – A HyperCard Replacement as a story · 191 points
HN discussionThis looks super cool and I'm hyped to try it. Reminds me of Decker https://www.beyondloom.com/decker/index.html which I saw on hacker news ~18 months ago, similar ethos but this seems like it will be more applicable to daily use cases.
Comment linking /decker/index.html
on “Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file”Submitted The Treachery of Image Files as a story · 113 points
HN discussionhttps://www.beyondloom.com/decker/index.html
Comment linking /decker/index.html
on “Dynamicland 2024”Submitted Special K: an interactive K compiler that generates GLSL as a story · 106 points
HN discussionCardStock[0] isn’t mentioned in this article, but seems broadly similar in goals and approach to Scrappy. Unlike Scrappy (so far as I can tell) CardStock is open-source and can be run locally.[1] Decker[2] (which is also open-source) has answers to several of the things outlined on Scrappy’s roadmap, including facilities for representing and manipulating tabular data with its query language and grid widgets and the…
Comment linking /decker/index.html
on “Scrappy – Make little apps for you and your friends”Submitted Lil: A Scripting Language as a story · 104 points
HN discussionI will make no claims or implications whatsoever that it's "production-ready", but a different strategy which could work is to use Awk (which is at least as omnipresent as bash) to bootstrap an interpreter for a richer scripting language: https://beyondloom.com/blog/lila.html
Comment linking /blog/lila.html
on “Amber: Programming language compiled to Bash”Submitted Crab – an interpreter for a tiny subset of Logo as a story · 70 points
HN discussionThanks for the tip. Looks like they also have a webcomic: http://beyondloom.com/
Comment linking /
on “Stages of denial in encountering K”Submitted A World Without Strings Is Chaos as a story · 70 points
HN discussionA similar tool I wrote several years ago: http://beyondloom.com/tools/dith.html
Comment linking /tools/dith.html
on “Convert photos to Atkinson dithering”Submitted Lila: A Lil Interpreter in Posix Awk as a story · 67 points
HN discussion> RIP HyperCard, may you be never forgotten. There's Decker https://beyondloom.com/decker/
Comment linking /decker/
on “I only use Google Sheets”Submitted First THINK C Program (2020) as a story · 66 points
HN discussionThere are a number of dynamic languages to choose from where tables/dataframes are truly first-class datatypes: perhaps most notably Q[0]. There are also emerging languages like Rye[1] or my own Lil[2]. I suspect that in the fullness of time, mainstream languages will eventually fully incorporate tabular programming in much the same way they have slowly absorbed a variety of idioms traditionally seen as part of func…
Comment linking /tools/trylil.html
on “Python is not a great language for data science”Submitted Four Years with Decker as a story · 63 points
HN discussionThe first two points are foundational design principles for Decker[1], a programming environment which can be used as a local application or as a single-file self-contained web page which still retains all the development tools. The same is true for TiddlyWiki[2]. The web ecosystem already provides the substrate necessary to realize these visions, it's a matter of building things with a particular perspective in min…
Comment linking /decker/
on “Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers”Submitted The art of CHIP-8 as a story · 58 points
HN discussion
