frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Wikimap: A Map of Wikipedia

https://wikimap.wiki/
1•brokensegue•27s ago•0 comments

CRMs APL Archive

https://crms-apl.computerhistory.org/
1•tosh•37s ago•0 comments

Prompt to Chip

https://www.prompttochip.com/
1•jpatel3•1m ago•0 comments

End-to-end encrypted RCS messaging begins rolling out today

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/05/end-to-end-encrypted-rcs-messaging-begins-rolling-out-toda...
1•blintz•1m ago•0 comments

Hackers abuse Google ads, Claude.ai chats to push Mac malware

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-abuse-google-ads-claudeai-chats-to-push-ma...
1•Brajeshwar•1m ago•0 comments

Birth rates keep falling. We need to plan for an older America with fewer kids

https://www.vox.com/health/487637/falling-birth-rates-aging-america-demographic-reality
1•ryan_j_naughton•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mimik – open-source local-first alternative to Scribe and Tango

https://github.com/westpoint-io/mimik
1•max-roma•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Inspection Credit – read your inspection, draft the negotiation

https://www.inspectioncredit.com
1•scarsam•3m ago•0 comments

End-to-end encrypted RCS messaging begins rolling out today for Android and iOS

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android/android-ios-end-to-end-encrypted-rcs...
1•xd1936•4m ago•0 comments

Elements of Programming

https://elementsofprogramming.com/
1•tosh•4m ago•0 comments

Dynamic Persistent Tile Scheduling w/ Cluster Launch Control (CLC) on Blackwell

https://research.colfax-intl.com/dynamic-persistent-tile-scheduling-with-cluster-launch-control-c...
1•matt_d•5m ago•0 comments

MartinLoop – budget caps and audit trails for AI coding agents

https://github.com/Keesan12/Martin-Loop
1•martinloop•7m ago•1 comments

Interactive Cellular Automata

https://www.simloops.com/r/cellular
1•nerdlogic•7m ago•0 comments

Officially canceling our Anthropic plan, it's [too expensive]

https://twitter.com/morganlinton/status/2053165575824887938
3•jamesliudotcc•9m ago•0 comments

Interactive Cellular Automata

1•nerdlogic•9m ago•0 comments

Art Bacon: Find the degrees of separation between two artists

https://networks.vaguespac.es/bacon.html?ulan1=500019484&ulan2=500006031
1•thebigship•10m ago•0 comments

Self-hosted Tailscale, Part 2: Ad-blocking DNS

https://blog.fidelramos.net/software/tailscale-2-ad-blocking-dns
1•fidelramos•12m ago•0 comments

Bubble Curtain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_curtain
1•simojo•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MessyData – turn messy data into clean tables/CSV

https://www.messydata.app
2•innovationlab•14m ago•0 comments

Update hints at four separate Steam Machine models and a reservation system

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gaming-pcs/new-steam-update-hints-at-four-separate-steam-machine...
1•evo_9•14m ago•0 comments

Calculating Curvature

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2026/05/08/calculating-curvature/
1•ibobev•15m ago•0 comments

Reverse Engineering Mersenne Twister with Linear Algebra

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2026/05/10/reverse-mersenne-twister/
1•ibobev•16m ago•0 comments

Strategic Planning at the PSF

https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2026/05/strategic-planning-at-psf.html
1•lumpa•16m ago•0 comments

Shrinking the OxCaml JS_of_OCaml bundle: 285 MB to 4 MB

https://kcsrk.info/ocaml/oxcaml/modes/2026/05/10/shrinking-the-oxcaml-bundle/
1•ibobev•16m ago•0 comments

The Anti-Singularity

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k3XHZ4DjykLSfsnks/the-anti-singularity
2•gmays•16m ago•0 comments

Consensus on a MOQ Media Layer Player Framework Should Speed Market Adoption

https://www.red5.net/blog/consensus-on-a-moq-media-layer-player-framework/
1•mondainx•17m ago•0 comments

Why Deadlines Explode Stress

https://thegoodbusy.substack.com/p/why-deadlines-explode-stress
1•mooreds•17m ago•0 comments

Chrome's Silent Gemini Nano Download Has a Consent Problem

https://www.kylereddoch.me/blog/chromes-silent-gemini-nano-download-has-a-consent-problem/
2•speckx•18m ago•0 comments

First Impressions: NetBird

https://janlukas.blog/thoughts/2026/05/netbird
1•jlelse•19m ago•0 comments

GhostLock – Lockout Without Encryption

https://ghostlock.io/
1•happyopossum•19m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

I Miss Visual Basic

https://micro.webology.dev/2025/05/11/i-miss-visual-basic/
19•speckx•12mo ago

Comments

lysace•12mo ago
There has been so much VB love here lately. Here are some counterpoints:

In the 90s, when you saw that a Windows app needed Visual Basic DLLs, you kind of knew that the app in question was very likely created by a complete amateur.

The best apps tended to be tiny and written in C by wizards.

pvg•12mo ago
Some miss old handy tools, others miss the old gatekeeping.
lysace•12mo ago
Gatekeeping or not, it was a useful indicator. There was so much crap.
rbanffy•12mo ago
I’ve seen terrible programs written in all sorts of languages.
lysace•12mo ago
And there were no patterns, particulary between 1992-1995, for MS Windows apps?
tptacek•12mo ago
Bracketing this with '92-'95 makes the claim so much funnier.
rbanffy•12mo ago
One thing VB allowed was horrible visual design. When you wrote a Windows app in C or C++, you are happy when the button appears in the UI and you leave it alone at that point. VB allowed people to customise their buttons with all sorts of colours and patterns no sane UI designer would attempt.
pvg•12mo ago
Same with Hypercard, perhaps even more so since Hypercard let you respond to UI gestures the standard UI didn't really use like mouseovers.
rbanffy•12mo ago
HyperCard, at least initially, didn’t have color, so it somewhat limited how horrendous the UI could be.
tptacek•12mo ago
[Nobody][1] [ever][2] [wrote][3] [crap][4] [in][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail] [C][6].
guidedlight•12mo ago
Most apps in the 90’s/early 00’s were tiny. They did one thing well.

It’s in that context, VB did really well. The thing that VB didn’t do well is scale due to language limitations, but for tiny apps it didn’t matter.

mattl•12mo ago
When you go to a modern website and you see it downloads 900kb of JavaScript just to show you the homepage, how do you feel about that?

I was a VB developer for a few years. I'm trying to remember the name of the tool we used to bundle VB applications into a single binary. It wasn't a Microsoft tool.

lysace•12mo ago
> When you go to a modern website and you see it downloads 900kb of JavaScript just to show you the homepage, how do you feel about that?

That shipping sites like that should cause you to pay some kind of tax. Use that tax income to invest in software security.

mattl•12mo ago
I saw a thread the other day on creating a website without JavaScript and so many people were saying it couldn’t be done.
rbanffy•12mo ago
I like the idea of an IDE with integrated GUI builder. We had a couple - I used NetBeans to make Java ME applications for phones.

Shouldn’t be too hard to build a framework that loads a GUI definition and auto-binds UI events to functions according to a naming convention. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t already such a thing for Python.

guidedlight•12mo ago
VB UI’s tended to be fixed and designed for a world where everyone ran a 4:3 640x480 VGA monitor. This made VB’s UI builder very easy to achieve good results.

I’m not sure the same approach would work today.

rbanffy•12mo ago
Just replace pixels with millimetres and we are safe.

At some point it got anchors in the widgets so you could position it at a distance of another control or the window border (at least). The same effect can be done with layout managers and other tricks.

jenkstom•12mo ago
Why not Delphi? And why not Lazarus?
mattl•12mo ago
> Why not Lazarus?

I've never heard of this or if I have, I don't remember it.

It's an open source IDE that's Delphi compatible. The author of the article is trying to make a Mac app.

* Downloads are from an ad-ridden SourceForge page.

* I download Lazarus I don't get a nice little Mac app... I get a folder full of stuff

* Starting the app, macOS tells me “lazarus” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

* On the project screenshots page, ReactOS is shown before macOS and macOS screenshots are from a while ago.

Contrast that experience with... VSCodium, the open source community version of VSCode.

* Download is from GitHub, no ads.

* Downloads a disk image with a familiar pattern

* Drag the VSCodium app bundle to my Applications folder

* I get prompted if I want to open it as it's something downloaded... and VSCodium opens (slowly at first) -- up pops a message saying I've downloaded the x86 version by mistake and I should download the ARM64 version and there's a link to do it... downloading the correct version and it opens instantly.

--

All of this to say... with any project, open source or proprietary there is a sense of native/correctly packaged for your OS that's obvious, and if a project doesn't do that I wonder if anyone is using it for that OS.

TrackerFF•12mo ago
VB.NET works just fine, no? Granted it is 13-14 years since I last time touched VB.NET, but slapping together apps in visual studio was a breeze. If something serious hasn't happened since then, it should still be easy.
gschizas•12mo ago
Modern VB.NET (and C#) suffer from overcomplication, from trying to do too much. And at the same time, not doing enough.

There are (at least) three ways to make a desktop application (Classic Windows Forms, XAML and other, more different XAML, for what used to be Metro/Windows Store apps). Not all functionality overlaps between them.

There are a plethora of (paid) custom controls which reimplement the wheel for all of those (because Microsoft didn't bundle in some elementary Windows controls)

That being said, I personally miss LightSwitch.

neonsunset•12mo ago
You are confusing platform-specific(!) GUI frameworks with the languages themselves, which have been long "divorced" from the platform they initially targeted.
jperoutek•12mo ago
VB.NET is still a supported platform by microsoft, with the GUI builder and everything. We still use VB.NET exclusively at my current job, for better or for worse. With the addition of tools and libraries like DevExpress, its honestly not a bad setup.
mattl•12mo ago
IIRC, VB.NET disregarded the 20+ years of VB developers for the most part.
nom•12mo ago
VB will always have a special place in my heart.

  On Error Resume Next
dyl000•12mo ago
I was a real big fan of vb.net! Built so much with it.
sph•12mo ago
I started with VB6, but I was not a great fan of the language. Soon, I moved to MSVC++6 with MFC, and even though it had its own RAD system for designing dialogs, it was so half-arsed and limiting compared to Visual Basic. You couldn't even change the foreground colour of a label!

I still remember the envy when I found out Delphi developers were not subject to these silly restrictions, and their GUIs were always so colourful.