Alternatives
Products that do what Show HN your embarrassing (old) code does
First I'll start off: http://pastebin.com/ATdDUStd That was from January 2008. I was young and stupid. I'm probably just as stupid now, but at least I can see now how stupid that was. So let's open up the shame files, and show how far we've come by recognising how bad we used to be.
- 1HT
Ever wanted to type as fast as those amazing hackers in the movies? now you can! just write something. Yes, i was really bored. To change writing speed: javascript:writer.speed=10;
2011 · duiker101.tk
- 2

- 3

- 4MB
Hi HN!, My brother got a 5 years jail sentence but is coming out soon, a few months ago he decided to learn to code with no prior experience. I find the way he is studying very inspirational so decided to post his (simple) program. But first, here is what he needs to go through to learn: - We the family send him javascript and html books - He studies them and writes programs in pen and paper - He calls me so I input what he wrote on my computer and we debug it live via a phone call, he has to imagine the program in his head. The crazy part is up until a few days ago he didn't have access to…
2020
- 5WD
Hey there, First time posting on Hacker News in about 2 years! The reason I’m posting is that I thought I’d write about the product I’ve been building, in hopes it resonates with people. Why build yet another social app? Because I deleted almost all social media around 3/4 years ago as it was just net negative on my life. There was very little that was truly interesting, I didn’t care about looking good to other people and because of the ‘media’ and ads, the apps were all designed to make me spend too much time for what I was getting. I hated it and what it meant for people’s behaviour,…
2022 · oncircles.com
- 6WL
I just sent out my 100th issue of Hacker Newsletter and announced my newest newsletter: Wayback Letter - http://www.waybackletter.com/ In either a daily or weekly version, you'll get links to great HN articles from the past five years. A great way to see how HN has grown and changed, plus see what was going on at different times. Lastly, there are a ton of great reads to learn from that I never saw the first go around. Would love to get feedback and my goal is to expand this past HN in the future.
2012
- 7DT
Magnet link: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:44c65b5779d9d8021e002584fa73740f36d052a6&dn=10m_hn_comments_sorted Go to https://hn-archive.appspot.com/ for the torrent file / source code. I'll be semi-frequently checking the story and answering any questions which may come up.
2015
- 8

- 9IG
Here's a video of it in action https://twitter.com/i/status/1667355251773526016 I didn't end up using it that much back then and no one else seems to have cared it existed, but it was a project I used to derust my programming skills and I'm to this day proud of the flamboyant design. To anyone reading this: you don't have to let your old code rot away in the graveyard of distant memories just because times change. With enough persistence and a little perseverance anything is possible. Code doesn't have an expiration date. -day
2023 · github.com
- 10NOnooooo.ooo▲14
Link: http://nooooo.ooo Github: https://github.com/aiwebb/nooooo.ooo This was just a dumb excuse to use the .ooo TLD. Inspired by the wonderful http://yesno.wtf.
2017
- 11CA
2016 · github.com
- 12VC
Here's what we hacked at the 4hourventure.com event today: http://vintagecartoons.tv
2013 · vintagecartoons.tv
- 13GA
For the past few years, I've been frustrated at how we document our products. The code can tell you what you ended up doing, maybe why you ended up doing it (if your team is disciplined about comments/documents), but it can't tell you why you didn't do what you didn't do. Time and time again, I've seen teams try to change something to a better way, only to realize why it was done the "worse" way in the first place. Documenting decisions not taken is just really hard, ADRs help but doing it for everything is just too noisy and time-consuming. What's more, most of the decisions just…
Apr 2026 · github.com
- 14SO
Inspired by a comment thread yesterday [1] I made this mini site: https://excel.secretgeek.net/ Reason: I often want to share Joel Spolsky's famous "You Suck at Excel" video tutorial with "important" business people inside the large enterprise where I work. But it would be easily misconstrued as trolling if I sent a business customer a URL that literally tells them, right in the heading, that they "suck" at excel. So, as advised by user @TuringTest (in the thread mentioned above) I created a mini site, on its own sub-domain, that is palatable to a business mindset, and…
2019
- 15IL
I strongly believe that every developer is a teacher and likewise. Every time you are asked to help someone else understand your code, you’ll always be grateful to be able to share your own knowledge with others. Explain Code App is the place you can make this happen! I am eager to hear your thoughts on what I have put together so far. Would love to hear your feedback! Let me know if there are any other features you would like for this site, I’m open for ideas and would love the community feedback. Here is the link: https://www.explaincode.app/
2022
- 16RO
I was lucky enough to have my site trending on Friday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25872922). It’s an icon site that lists open source icons. I wanted to share some stats on the results after 3 days. Worth noting was that I submitted it on a Friday morning (at which point I went for a walk and a coffee; eek). - 24,997 page views. I (embarrassingly) didn’t have GA set up when I first submitted it, so this is probably missing a few hundred page views - 21 “feedback” emails (half of which were spam). I assume such a high percentage of these were spam because my Feedback…
2021
- 17DE
Creator here. In a nutshell this extension is a "Like / Dislike" system but for website results. I miss the days of things like the YouTube dislike bar, where you can quickly assess if something is good or not. Currently sitting at ~90 users. To get it off the ground I've scraped the last year of HN to make a set of good links, and used a few content farm blacklists to make a set of bad links. Right now it's semi-useful and should only get better with time. There are some simple measures in place to prevent spam & abuse, but will cross that bridge if it ever comes. All feedback welcome!
2023 · github.com
- 18IM
I am a non-hacker "idea guy" with zero discernible talent. Like most, the story starts with me doing things the hard way. I dreamt of a tool that would save me countless hours. Like most of my ideas, it was supposed to die in a couple of hours, but this one had some legs.... "If I needed this, surely others did too" kept looping in my head. Could I get this built? Could I build it myself? Nah...too lazy to learn how, but before I did anything, I had to promise myself one thing: No more ideas! If ideas were sit-ups, I would have a six pack instead of this tire. It was a constant mental…
2012
- 19IB
Hello all, I built about 2 years ago a coding website for kids, teens and adults: https://codeguppy.com Despite my efforts to promote the website it is still not well know. I post almost daily about it on Twitter at https://twitter.com/codeguppy ... but even there I don't have views. The website is fun... although I still have a ton of things to add. I appreciate if you take a look and suggest improvements and most importantly help me with spreading the news about this website. I really need a boost! Thanks all!
2021
- 20CT
Hello folks! Me and a small group of developers started a free newsletter. The idea is to share 3 web dev tips every Monday. Our goal is to improve our writing skills and share knowledge as much as possible. So far, few hundreds of developers have subscribed and seem to like it. To get a feeling of what kind of stuff we share, here is an example of last Monday's issue: https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=5e499c75818d4611a008adfb5&id=106e5fbc71 If this is something that would interest you, you can subscribe here (its completely free):…
2019
- 21MF
Hi! Long time reader, first time submitter. I've finallllyy got my first webapp online. It's been a long time coming, I started it over a year ago and just been an hour here, a couple of hours here, and a period of a couple of months of nothing. I first wrote it as a way to learn some python it sort of grew to fill a need I had. It's at a point now where I'd LOVE some feedback as I am going round in circules. Please, it's free, just hit the home page, plugin in a name/email and url you want to links checked on. If you use the name 'DeleteMe' I will remove the account after a week, so feel…
2012
- 22LS
Almost eight years ago I launched an online “Linux sysadmin course for newbies” here at HN. It was a side-project that went well, but never generated enough money to allow me to fully commit to leaving the Day Job. After surviving the Big C, and getting made redundant I thought I might improve and relaunch it commercially – but my doctors are a pessimistic bunch, so it looked like I didn’t have the time. Instead, I rejigged/relaunched it via a Reddit forum this February as free and open - and have now gathered a team of helpers to ensure that it keeps going each month even after I can’t…
2020
- 23BM
Hey HN crowd! Two days ago I realized I'm almost unable to read a book or a long article without getting distracted by Twitter/HN/Reddit/Work. The situation is so terrible, I'm even getting afraid of big articles, and my ReadItLater list is getting pretty long (shameful I know) ... and I'm pretty sure most of you are in this situation :) Being used to TL;DRs on long reddit posts, I thought it would be great to have these for everything, so I quickly hacked this website: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/ Here is an example of TL;DR: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/5tropy I would love to…
2011
- 24IM
2015 · jsnider3.github.io
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →