[HN Gopher] Original Hacker News Source Code (2009)
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       Original Hacker News Source Code (2009)
        
       Author : Maksadbek
       Score  : 81 points
       Date   : 2021-06-09 19:49 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | utxaa wrote:
       | what about the current source?
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | The current source of Hacker News is proprietary, because this
         | forum is attached to a billion-dollar startup incubator and
         | there's apparently _real money_ to be had for wantrepreneurs
         | trying to game the algorithm, and plenty of  "business logic"
         | they would have to remove and whatnot.
         | 
         | The current source of Arc Lisp is at https://arclanguage.org.
         | It isn't open source in that there is any way to contribute or
         | make pull requests that I'm aware of (I may simply be too much
         | of a pleb to know,) rather now and then new versions simply
         | descend from the Lisp gods and are posted. So it's more 'source
         | available.'
         | 
         | The current public fork of Arc Lisp is Anarki at
         | https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki. It has deviated a great
         | deal from Arc and its version of the forum is not in any way in
         | feature parity with Hacker News. But anyone is welcome to make
         | a PR and contribute.
         | 
         | The Arc language forum is at https://arclanguage.org/forum.
        
       | sneak wrote:
       | Is there a particular reason the current HN source code isn't
       | public? Is it security-related (people might find and exploit
       | bugs), privacy/secrecy-related (YC-internal features that aren't
       | publicly disclosed), or just tradition?
        
       | yellow_lead wrote:
       | Maybe this should read "Original Hacker News Source Code" as this
       | doesn't look like it's been updated since 2015.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Yes, I've added that and added the date now- I assume it's from
         | 2009 since that's the last announcement I could find.
        
       | 51Cards wrote:
       | I always loved working in LISP, it was just so concise and really
       | made you focus on code structure and hierachy. Need to get back
       | into it again sometime.
        
         | qsort wrote:
         | Agreed, there's something special about LISPs I can't quite put
         | my finger on. Which is kind of funny, because I've never used
         | any lisp professionally and I don't think there are very many
         | use cases I'd use one for.
         | 
         | Maybe SICP is just an unreasonably excellent book?
        
           | amackera wrote:
           | To me, the specialness of LISPs comes from the uniformity of
           | the syntax (which in turn makes code easier to understand and
           | reason about). This is probably highly subjective!
           | 
           | That said, SICP _is_ unreasonably excellent :)
        
             | QuadrupleA wrote:
             | I've enjoyed messing around with Lisp, but for me the
             | uniformity of the syntax makes it harder to reason about -
             | everything looks the same, big blobs of parenthesis.
             | 
             | That's part of its appeal, but also a big part of its
             | downfall I think - other languages can utilize a wider
             | "Ascii spectrum" and represent different things in
             | lexically different ways, making it easier to distinguish
             | at a glance.
        
             | rgrmrts wrote:
             | Just adding on to this thread as a fairly new lisp
             | enthusiast. I picked up SICP during the pandemic and have
             | really fallen in the lisp rabbit hole and it has been super
             | fun.
             | 
             | I've mostly been toying with scheme (guile) and a bit of
             | clojure.
        
       | dijit wrote:
       | I doubt very much that this is the actual code, not being
       | modified in 8 years is a huge stretch.
        
       | hellbannedguy wrote:
       | I don't know anything about Paul Graham, but I wish more sites
       | were coded like this site.
       | 
       | It will probally take me forever, but one of my goals is to
       | understand Lisp, and how this website works.
        
         | bachmeier wrote:
         | Not that this is the best way to learn Lisp, but this book by
         | PG might help you _understand_ Lisp:
         | http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html
        
           | hellbannedguy wrote:
           | thanks
        
       | RyanShook wrote:
       | Are there any more current versions of HN code available?
        
       | ibraheemdev wrote:
       | @dang is Hacker News still running on Lisp?
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related old threads:
       | 
       |  _The earliest version of HN I can find; 166 LOC_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723767 - July 2009 (19
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Preliminary release of new Arc version, including latest HN
       | source_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=634113 - May 2009
       | (9 comments)
       | 
       |  _News.YC open-sourced_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122829 - Feb 2008 (20
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Arc 's Out_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=106398 - Jan
       | 2008 (124 comments)
       | 
       | Others?
        
         | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
         | > The earliest version of HN I can find; 166 LOC -
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723767 - July 2009 (19
         | comments)
         | 
         | Unfortunately the original file (news.6sep06.arc) seems to be
         | missing, anyone has a copy?
        
           | msla wrote:
           | https://web.archive.org/web/20090728102853/https://www.ycomb.
           | ..
        
       | caslon wrote:
       | It's worth noting that this is a _very_ old distribution of it;
       | Arc now runs on Racket.
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-09 23:00 UTC)