Top all-time · #23298
AN. Blog
Personal blog · andrewnile.co.uk/blogprogrammingculture
AN. Blog is a personal blog at andrewnile.co.uk about programming and culture. Since 2021, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog's posts on retro game design and interface history, such as a post on the James Pond 3 Genesis password system. Comments cite them while discussing old UI and password quirks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
AN. front page.
What Hacker News says?
Nah, the Windows ecosystem never even got close to being consistent. MS Office had its own UI toolkit and routinely invented new UI paradigms that weren't exposed in any Windows API, leaving people who wanted to look native scrambling to reimplement. This was particularly the case for toolbars. MS Office first invented the so-called "coolbar" and then the ribbon. Internet Explorer also rolled its own toolbar styles…
Comment linking /blog/remembering-realplayer/
on “SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces”Submitted Adventures in Teletext Recovery as a story · 8 points
HN discussionFaxanadu passwords were pretty terrible for sure..but hands down the the absolute worst has to be james pond 3 on the genesis. There was like 4 different colours and a bunch of symbols like pieces of cheese and rayguns and stuff. The passwords were 32 characters long. https://www.andrewnile.co.uk/blog/james-pond-3-fish-code/ Writing those things out was ridiculous. We had pages and pages scattered around with James…
Comment linking /blog/james-pond-3-fish-code/
on “Castlevania III Password Algorithm”