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Advent of Computing
Personal blog · adventofcomputing.libsyn.comhistoryprogramming
Advent of Computing is a personal blog at adventofcomputing.libsyn.com about history and programming. Since 2019, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 48 times, most often “How Much Has Unix Changed”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link the Advent of Computing podcast, which covers the history of computing one topic per episode, including Z80, CP/M, memex, Emacs and Lisp. Commenters often recommend it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Welcome to Advent of Computing, the show that talks about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have rich stories behind their creation, in each episode we will learn how older tech has lead to our modern world.
Most-linked posts?
- How Much Has Unix Changed2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-06-05
What Hacker News says?
> He [David DiFrancesco] broke ground in film printing — specifically, in putting digital images on analog film. > Their system was fairly straightforward. Every frame of Toy Story ’s negative was exposed, three times, in front of a CRT screen that displayed the movie. While I have no doubt that this hadn't been done at the scale and resolution, it struck me that I'd heard about this concept in a podcast episode [1]…
Comment linking /episode-88-beflix-early-digital-animation
on “The 'Toy Story' You Remember”Submitted Advent of Computing: Episode 89 – Forth as a story · 16 points
HN discussionEntertainingly clarified in the wonderful podcast 'Advent of Computing' ep. 36 [0]. Highly recommended! [0] https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-36-the-rise-of-...
Comment linking /episode-36-the-rise-of-cpm
on “CP/M is really open-source now”Submitted Advent of Computing Episode 92 – Copy Protection [audio] as a story · 9 points
HN discussionIf you're into listening to podcasts, I highly recommend Sean Haas's Advent of Computing podcast, which bills itself as "the show that talks about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing." https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?”Submitted Capabilities of Intel 4004 as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe Advent of Computing [1] podcast recently put out their episode 47 which I think provides a sort-of explanation of this line of thinking. The short answer is that the context in which Emacs was originally developed (a contemporary of Unix, and not Unix itself, which was something I wasn't aware of before) emphasized user power and lack of restriction to a much greater degree than much of the current computing lan…
Comment linking /episode-47-its-open-computing
on “A rabbit hole full of Lisp”Submitted Advent of Computing: Episode 159 – The Intel 286: A Legacy Trap as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf you like podcasts, there is Advent of Computing. It's not chronological, instead covering a different topic every episode. Most recent episodes are about magnetic core memory, INTERCAL, a hypertext system developed by the US military, and the Analytical Engine, respectively. There's over 80 episodes now so there's a lot to learn about. Website: https://adventofcomputing.com/ RSS: https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.…
Comment linking /rss
on “Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?”Submitted Advent of Computing: Episode 101 – Origins of Ada as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFor those that care about how it came to be, and is still being used, Advent of Computing podcast did a session on it and how it traces back to the 8080. https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-34-8080-vs-z80
Comment linking /episode-34-8080-vs-z80
on “Z80 CPU User Manual (2016)”Submitted Advent of Computing Ep. 84 – VisiCalc, the Killer App [audio] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionthere's good "Advent of computing" episode about memex and hyperlinks https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-26-memex-and-hy...
Comment linking /episode-26-memex-and-hyperlinks
on “Review: Project Xanadu – The Internet That Might Have Been”Submitted Its: Open Computing as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis was discussed in Advent of Computing episode 150 "Starting Windows Up"[1,2] and the timeline of a 1983 demo which showed overlapping windows and multitasking, but also highlighted the contrast to the DR4 build from late 1984 claiming to introduce a multi-tasking scheduler. This isn't really new information to the Stack Exchange question and answers, but it's kind of fun coincidental coverage of the topic. [1] h…
Comment linking /episode-150-starting-windows-up
on “Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?”Submitted Digital Voice History as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAdvent of Computing had a nice episode about this recently: https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-115-digital-lif...
Comment linking /episode-115-digital-lifeforms
on “Genetic Algorithms for Evolution of QWOP Gaits”Submitted What's Better Than Binary? – Advent of Computing Episode 187 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Advent of Computing: Episode 140 – Assembling Code as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Advent of Computing: Episode 113 – Prolog, Part II as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Advent of Computing: Episode 102 – Application of Ada as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Canon Cat: the little computer that could have changed the world as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Advertising the Altair 8800 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Early PC Clone History as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Was Timesharing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Myth of the Macintosh as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How much has Unix changed? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Much Has Unix Changed as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Is A Programming Language? – Advent of Computing Episode 184 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Advent of Computing: Episode 179 – Programming Block by Block as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
