Top all-time · #133
www.linusakesson.net
Personal blog · linusakesson.netprogramminggames
www.linusakesson.net is a personal blog at linusakesson.net about programming and games. Since 2008, 294 different Hacker News readers have linked it 480 times, most often “A Mind Is Born (2017)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Linus Åkesson's blog for its terminal/TTY internals articles and his 256-byte C64 demoscene work, especially 'A Mind Is Born'. One commenter follows the blog regularly.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Terminal article called 'extremely lucid' and 'the canonical resource'; 256-byte demo called 'great' and 'cool'.
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?
- A Mind Is Born (2017)26 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2017-04-21
- The TTY demystified (2008)19 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2011-01-27
- The TTY Demystified (2008)19 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2018-05-24
- The TTY demystified18 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2009-06-15
- A case against syntax highlighting (2007)16 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2013-11-17
- The Chipophone – A homemade 8-bit synthesizer (2010)8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2010-07-22
- A case against syntax highlighting8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2008-07-22
- Kernighan's Lever (2012)8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2012-12-12
- /dev/zero has infinite electrons and /dev/null has an infinite appetite for them7 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2011-08-03
- Kernighan's Lever (2012)7 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2019-04-23
What Hacker News says?
> the old Kernighan quote “Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?” This quote can be interpreted in an intelligence-positive way, to encourage you to learn by writing the cleverest possible code. Then, when you get to debug it, you will be forced to improve your skills. This interpreta…
Comment linking /programming/kernighans-lever/index.php
on “Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer”Submitted The Commodordion as a story · 519 points
HN discussionA 256-byte music demo: https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/
Comment linking /scene/a-mind-is-born/
on “Nightdrive”Submitted 8-bit Boléro as a story · 335 points
HN discussionYeah, good. "A Mind is Born" is an intangible world cultural heritage IMO: https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/
Comment linking /scene/a-mind-is-born/
on “Finland adds the demoscene as a UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage”Submitted A Mind Is Born (2017) as a story · 311 points
HN discussionYou can also do this with UNIX pipes and a few small C programs, apparently. https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/pipelogic/index.php
Comment linking /programming/pipelogic/index.php
on “I don't know how CPUs work so I simulated one in code”Submitted A Mind is Born as a story · 306 points
HN discussionComputers in UNIX http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/pipelogic/index.php
Comment linking /programming/pipelogic/index.php
on “Fully Functional 1KB Hard Drive in Vanilla Minecraft”Submitted Safe VSP – 30 year old Commodore 64 bug demystified (2013) as a story · 265 points
HN discussionThat's partly the reason why I tend to avoid software with "modern" in its description... but more seriously, I don't care much for syntax highlighting --- I can put up with it (unless the colours are too distracting), but I do prefer monochrome text. Related: http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/
Comment linking /programming/syntaxhighlighting/
on “Exa, a modern replacement for ls”Submitted Nine – seemingly impossible C64 demo as a story · 252 points
HN discussionSaw his page and thought it looked familiar. This is the same guy who coded Conway's Game of Life in Brainfuck: http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/brainfuck/
Comment linking /programming/brainfuck/
on “I decided to make a graphics card for my Amiga 2000”Submitted /dev/zero has infinite electrons and /dev/null has an infinite appetite for them as a story · 250 points
HN discussionOne talented person. I don't think the typical CS grad would be anywhere near this level. This is pretty much a "10x". But there are a few others too; here is someone who made an entire SoC (including CPU, GPU, and audio --- all of his own design) on an FPGA, plus wrote the software to run on it. And this is apparently his first FPGA project: http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/parallelogram/
Comment linking /scene/parallelogram/
on “I decided to make a graphics card for my Amiga 2000”Submitted The TTY demystified (2008) as a story · 243 points
HN discussionIn a similar vein, this is one of the most interesting things I’ve come across on HN over the years: https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/pipelogic/index.php Past HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15363029
Comment linking /programming/pipelogic/index.php
on “/dev/null is an ACID compliant database”Submitted The TTY demystified as a story · 218 points
HN discussionI follow regularly these people, these are mostly slow-going blogs or websites: 1. Fabrice Bellard: https://bellard.org/ This is not really a blog, but a traditional website with links to the work of its author (who is probably one of the top programmers ever). It updates rarely, but when it does, it is to expose yet another monumental piece of computing work that will blow your universe. 2. Linus Akesson: https://w…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are good solo developer blogs that you enjoy reading?”Submitted The sixtyforgan: Commodore 64 equipped with a spring reverb as a story · 215 points
HN discussionPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11899385 "I found a paragraph in this article http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/ very apt at describing what Unix signals are like: In *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*, Douglas Adams mentions an extremely dull planet, inhabited by a bunch of depressed humans and a certain breed of animals with sharp teeth which communicate with the humans by biting the…
Comment linking /programming/tty/
on “Use mmap with care”Submitted The TTY Demystified (2008) as a story · 187 points
HN discussionThat one has a great explanation too: https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/ Also discussed previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14164907
Comment linking /scene/a-mind-is-born/
on “Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020”Submitted The Family Bass - Music with an NES as a story · 178 points
HN discussionNo TTY-related discussion is complete without a reference to Linus Akesson's extremely lucid article on the whole thing, including what all the other interesting Ctrl+ characters do: http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/ ...and the extensive previous HN discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10631513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094186 htt…
Comment linking /programming/tty/
on “What typing ^D does on Unix (2009)”Submitted Pipe Logic (2011) as a story · 178 points
HN discussionThe Commodordion (which also made the HN rounds recently): https://linusakesson.net/commodordion/index.php
Comment linking /commodordion/index.php
on “Show HN: Haxophone”Submitted The TTY demystified as a story · 168 points
HN discussionhttps://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/ 256 bytes the mp3 is 2.1MB ;-)
Comment linking /scene/a-mind-is-born/
on “IrfanView”Submitted The TTY demystified as a story · 161 points
HN discussion
