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Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming

https://codecrafters.io/blog/programming-project-ideas
114•vitaelabitur•3h ago•32 comments

A faster heart for F-Droid. Our new server is here

https://f-droid.org/2025/12/30/a-faster-heart-for-f-droid.html
268•kasabali•7h ago•111 comments

FediMeteo: A €4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-freebsd-vps-became-a-global-weather-s...
223•birdculture•6h ago•54 comments

Show HN: 22 GB of Hacker News in SQLite

https://hackerbook.dosaygo.com
322•keepamovin•8h ago•104 comments

Quality of drinking water varies significantly by airline

https://foodmedcenter.org/2026-center-for-food-as-medicine-longevity-airline-water-study/
20•azinman2•1h ago•5 comments

A Vulnerability in Libsodium

https://00f.net/2025/12/30/libsodium-vulnerability/
200•raggi•8h ago•23 comments

Zpdf: PDF text extraction in Zig – 5x faster than MuPDF

https://github.com/Lulzx/zpdf
113•lulzx•5h ago•46 comments

OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/12/30/openais-cash-burn-will-be-one-of-the-big-bubble-ques...
170•1vuio0pswjnm7•4h ago•212 comments

Mitsubishi Diatone D-160 (1985)

https://audio-database.com/MITSUBISHI-DIATONE/diatonesp/d-160-e.html
17•anigbrowl•1d ago•7 comments

Electrolysis can solve one of our biggest contamination problems

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/11/electrolysis-can-solve-one-of-our-bigges...
123•PaulHoule•7h ago•26 comments

Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/
109•AkshatJ27•3h ago•23 comments

Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux

https://loss32.org/
205•akka47•1d ago•305 comments

Toro: Deploy Applications as Unikernels

https://github.com/torokernel/torokernel
119•ignoramous•8h ago•104 comments

Reverse Engineering a Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel (2016)

https://www.gkbrk.com/hotel-music
169•bayesnet•1w ago•22 comments

Escaping containment: A security analysis of FreeBSD jails [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-escaping-containment-a-security-analysis-of-freebsd-jails
50•todsacerdoti•6h ago•1 comments

Non-Zero-Sum Games

https://nonzerosum.games/
325•8organicbits•14h ago•169 comments

Professional software developers don't vibe, they control

https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14012
108•dpflan•5h ago•150 comments

Everything as code: How we manage our company in one monorepo

https://www.kasava.dev/blog/everything-as-code-monorepo
177•benbeingbin•5h ago•164 comments

The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-british-empires-resilient-subsea.html
161•giuliomagnifico•12h ago•42 comments

Sabotaging Bitcoin

https://blog.dshr.org/2025/12/sabotaging-bitcoin.html
74•zdw•5h ago•41 comments

Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

https://hsu.cy/2025/12/times-new-american/
217•firexcy•13h ago•134 comments

Approachable Swift Concurrency

https://fuckingapproachableswiftconcurrency.com/en/
158•wrxd•12h ago•68 comments

Igniting the GPU: From Kernel Plumbing to 3D Rendering on RISC-V

https://mwilczynski.dev/posts/riscv-gpu-zink/
71•michalwilczynsk•12h ago•8 comments

Braid Math Article

https://mathvoices.ams.org/mathmedia/tonys-take-april-2022/
12•marysminefnuf•1w ago•0 comments

What Happened to Abit Motherboards

https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-abit-motherboards/
83•zdw•10h ago•61 comments

Humans May Be Able to Grow New Teeth Within Just 4 Years

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a69878870/human-new-tooth-regrowth-trials-japan-t...
79•rmason•4h ago•37 comments

Go away Python

https://lorentz.app/blog-item.html?id=go-shebang
340•baalimago•17h ago•326 comments

Hive (YC S14) Is Hiring a Staff Software Engineer (Data Systems)

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/hive.co/cb0dc490-0e32-4734-8d91-8b56a31ed497
1•patman_h•11h ago

Coase's Penguin, Or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm [pdf]

https://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF
8•loughnane•3h ago•0 comments

Netflix Open Content

https://opencontent.netflix.com/
587•tosh•15h ago•117 comments
Open in hackernews

Project ideas to appreciate the art of programming

https://codecrafters.io/blog/programming-project-ideas
110•vitaelabitur•3h ago

Comments

sanufar•2h ago
Highly recommend writing a BitTorrent client. The spec is easy to grok, it has a bunch of fun subproblems that you can go as deep or as shallow as you want into, and it's super rewarding being able to download something like the Debian kernel after all of your hard work. Magnet links and seeding are two fun things to tackle post basic implementation. It also got me really interested in peer to peer systems and DHTs like Chord!
yakattak•1h ago
In college one of our end of semester projects was to make a “peer to peer” client. Not specifically BitTorrent. It was so much fun! Coming up with the ways of handshaking, chunk sizes, etc. It was so cool to see it actually work as a new student.
Jtsummers•2h ago
This is a strange list. #58 is make your own malloc, ok. That's a moderately difficult project for a new developer (made harder if they don't know anything about what malloc actually does under the hood, you may need to study up a bit on operating systems and some other things before you even start). Followed by #59 where they suggest you build your own streaming protocol from scratch...

There are some good projects in there, but the levels of difficulty are all over the place.

keyle•2h ago
My rAI-dar says this list and blurbs are very likely produced by AI. It really reads like in near the middle.
azhenley•2h ago
I’ll plug my series of project ideas that have also been discussed here on HN over the years: Challenging programming projects every programmer should try

https://austinhenley.com/blog/challengingprojects.html

matthewfcarlson•2h ago
As part of undergrad we had to implement space invaders on a Zync FPGA so you got to choose which bits you did in hardware and what was in software. It was a blast seeing what people came up with as you could do “extras” that gave you bonus points. Someone built a simple microphone frequency analysis block so you could go left, right, and fire by playing notes on a recorder.
thfuran•54m ago
>on a Zync FPGA so you got to choose which bits you did in hardware and what was in software.

You mean verilog vs block diagram, or did those boards have like a microcontroller too for more normal software?

fxwin•2h ago
I've seen your list before and find it much easier to appreciate than the OP tbh. It is very concise, the descriptions actually describe what one might learn or struggle with and each project comes with resources to get started with (One day i might even get around to doing one of these ;)

The OP very much comes off to me as a "here are 100 books you need to read before you die" recommendation porn type of post where the author has done none of the things listed.

johnnyfived•22m ago
Agreed this is more appealing to read and visually look through even.
johnnyanmac•16m ago
The OP link feels like a list you scroll until you see something that interests you, and you jump on that. An ideaboard.

The link in this chain feels like a mini-curriculum. AKA "you do all these 7 things and you'll probably become very good at any job". a decent university will probably have you do 4-5 out of these projects (making a spreadsheet program is truly a huge feat, though).

They both have some use, but different use cases in my eyes.

zhainya•2h ago
Is this what the kids call "astroturfing"?
wg0•2h ago
AI usage verboten? Or erlaubt?
578_Observer•1h ago
I see comments suspecting this list is AI-generated. That might be true. But ironically, the practice of "building from scratch" is the best antidote to AI dependency.

Writing from Japan, we call this process "Shugyo" (austere training). A master carpenter spends years learning to sharpen tools, not because it's efficient, but to understand the nature of the steel.

Building your own Redis or Git isn't about the result (which AI can give you instantly). It is about the friction. That friction builds a mental model that no LLM can simulate.

Whether this post is marketing or not, the "Shugyo" itself is valid.

kace91•1h ago
>Writing from Japan, we call this process "Shugyo" (austere training). A master carpenter spends years learning to sharpen tools, not because it's efficient, but to understand the nature of the steel.

Is there repetition implied? Would you build your own redis 20 times? (Just curious).

jebarker•1h ago
Mike Acton talks about deliberate practice in programming exactly this way. Every day start with a blank sheet and try to build something for an hour (his example is Astroids). Next day, start again and get a little further. Eventually you'll be able to build the whole thing in an hour.
anonzzzies•59m ago
Not OP but I would and do write things 20x, for the simple reason that the 2nd is better than the 1st, even after refactoring the first, the 3rd better than the 2nd etc. We have a durable workflow thing from when it wasn't a thing yet (it was called enterprise workflow engine or something back then) which I started in PHP in the mid 90s, it has been rewritten by me over 30x and now its as optimal as it can be. It is finally finished. I have 20 year old clients who upgraded to it and are happier with the performance and stability. We do this with many parts of our software stack; not big refactoring but rewrite from scratch. One thing with this: in my opinion you can only rewrite if you are NOT adding any features; it should be a 1 to 1 rebuild.
578_Observer•18m ago
Great question. If you simply copy-paste the code 20 times, that is meaningless.

"Shugyo" is about internalization. The 1st time you build Redis, you learn the Syntax. The 10th time, you understand the Structure. By the 20th time, *the tool disappears.* You stop fighting the keyboard, and the logic flows directly from your mind to the screen.

In Kendo (Japanese fencing), we swing the bamboo sword thousands of times. Not to build muscle, but to remove the "lag" between thought and action. Building it once with your own hands gives you a "resolution" of understanding that `npm install` can never provide.

johnnyanmac•7m ago
yes, but it's not necessarily the same kind of repetitiveness in every industry.

In the tech space, Leetcode is repetitive by design, because after a while you realize the core problems are focusing on a half dozen different concepts. After getting good at throwing in a table, or whipping up a dynamic programming approach, you pull them out like you would a multiplication table that you memorized back in elementary and build from there.

There's questions on if this is a valuable skill in practice, where you'll be thrown into the weeds of many unfamiliar problems constantly. But it sure will make you look competent when at the interview stage. And maybe feel confident as a craftsman when you don't need to refer to documentation every 5 minutes.

mi_lk•1h ago
You really can't help mentioning you write your comment from Japan in most of your comments for some reason.

Not that it's my business that whether you were actually born and raised in Japan or an immigrant/expat. Just a random observation and that I don't think you have any less point without mentioning it

Considering your account age, it's a bit of bot smell if you ask me

578_Observer•34m ago
Fair point. That is my bad habit.

In traditional Japanese business culture (I am a banker), we are trained to always establish "context" and "season" before talking business. It feels rude to start abruptly.

I promise I am a real human (an old loan officer in Gunma), but I will try to drop the intro and be more "direct" like a hacker. Thanks for the feedback.

ertian•25m ago
I appreciated the texture of your message. It's really unfortunate that the bot plague is making us all suspicious of any well-written or idiosyncratic posts.
johnnyanmac•12m ago
bots know little about culture, especially Eastern culture. So I was immediately more trusting when the comment correctly (based on readings I've done on Japan for some years) talks about a concept that wouldn't pop up as much in western society.

On the other hand, hallucinating term you look up and contradict in seconds is peak bot behavior.

DrewADesign•14m ago
As a lifelong US (New England) resident and English speaker who’s socialized in tech spaces for nearly 30 years, your approach seemed completely normal and natural. I find it interesting to know a bit about who’s commenting. After all, this is a conversation: there’s no need to be terse.

I see no need to modify your approach.

rramadass•1h ago
This is just AI generated slop with things being all over the map with no details/notes etc.

A far better way is to go through the book series The Architecture of Open Source Applications and pick one which catches your fancy - https://aosabook.org/en/ There are enough details/notes here from experts to show one how to think about an application so that you have something concrete to start from.

SamDc73•1h ago
This reads a bit similar to the build-your-own-x series

https://github.com/codecrafters-io/build-your-own-x

Feel like one of these things a lot of talk about but very tiny do ...

TrackerFF•20m ago
Some of these could take a day, like random tree / forest.

Others are easily within the scope / size of a undergrad final project. Or even a masters degree thesis.

xthe•14m ago
Build something intentionally small and complete a tiny tool or protocol you can understand end-to-end. The satisfaction comes from clarity, constraints, and finishing the whole arc, not scale.
WD-42•10m ago
This is from codecrafters.io which is a platform that facilitates working on projects like these while essentially providing integration tests to keep you honest, as well some community. You work through well defined requirements to reach the full implementation. I’m currently working on their build your own redis project. It’s quite fun.

I don’t think this is AI generated. They ask the community for new project ideas, this list is probably made up of those they’ve received while plugging the challenges they already have implemented.