Top all-time · #124
catonmat.net
Personal blog · catonmat.netprogrammingmath
catonmat.net is a personal blog at catonmat.net about programming and math. Since 2007, 316 different Hacker News readers have linked it 603 times, most often “Why Vim uses hjkl keys as arrow keys”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-09-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link catonmat.net for the Vim hjkl history post, awk and shell one-liner explanations, and Unix tools. Commenters also point to its book recommendations.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Called 'excellent' and 'always interesting'; awk one-liner explanations a 'good resource'; several recommended reads.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
catonmat.net
Most-linked posts?
- Why Vim uses hjkl keys as arrow keys14 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2019-08-04
- Here is why vim uses the hjkl keys as arrow keys11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2012-03-09
- A proof that Unix utility sed is Turing complete10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2019-02-13
- A Unix Utility You Should Know About: Pipe Viewer7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2009-02-02
- Good at programming competitions does not equal good on the job [video]7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2015-04-05
- Famous Sed One-Liners Explained6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2008-10-08
- Low Level Bit Hacks You Absolutely Must Know6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2009-06-30
- Browserling goes viral with cheap phone users trying to use WhatsApp6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-12-06
- Ldd Arbitrary Code Execution6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-05-17
- Arbitrary code execution via ldd utility5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-10-26
What Hacker News says?
Being good at programming competitions correlates negatively with being good on the job - Peter Norvig http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-p...
Comment linking /blog/programming-competitions-work-performance/
on “A Competitive Programmer's Handbook”Submitted Browserling goes viral with cheap phone users trying to use WhatsApp as a story · 480 points
HN discussionhttps://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
Comment linking /why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
on “How to Exit Vim”Submitted Here is why vim uses the hjkl keys as arrow keys as a story · 478 points
HN discussionthis guy has a blog that recommends a lot of great books http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/
Comment linking /blog/top-100-books-part-one/
on “Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?”Submitted Good at programming competitions does not equal good on the job [video] as a story · 372 points
HN discussion>tree^H^H^H^Hgraph If we pretend we're using readline here, ^W (yank previous word) and ^U (yank to the start of the line) should save you some key presses. Some recommended bedtime reading: https://catonmat.net/ftp/readline-emacs-editing-mode-cheat-s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline#Emacs_keyboard_sh...
Comment linking /ftp/readline-emacs-editing-mode-cheat-sheet.pdf
on “New ‘Meow’ attack has deleted almost 4k unsecured databases”Submitted Using Fibonacci numbers to convert from miles to kilometers and vice versa as a story · 362 points
HN discussionhttps://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
Comment linking /why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
on “Neovim 0.5 is overpowering”Submitted Low Level Bit Hacks You Absolutely Must Know as a story · 342 points
HN discussionI like this idea. I've participated each year, only finished the 2020 one (most have 1-2 to go, never had the time & motivation to fight through it.) BTW, there is a great book that is right up this alley -- maybe you know it -- "The New Turing Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science"[0] I discovered "Omnibus" from Peter / Catonmat [1] It's 66 short, manageable topics, each ~5-8 pages: 1 Algorithms 2 Finite Autom…
Comment linking /top-100-books-part-one
on “Advent of Code 2021”Submitted I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web) as a story · 299 points
HN discussionhttp://stevehanov.ca/blog/ -- Updates infrequently. Very good programming articles. http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/ -- Updates infrequently. Good articles on Linux and Programming. Start here: http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/best-of http://catonmat.net -- He doesn't update much anymore since he's working on his startup but the archives are still good. Mostly unix tools and CompSci stuff IIRC. http://chneukirchen.or…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you read daily?”Submitted We open-sourced 90 node.js modules at Browserling as a story · 277 points
HN discussionWell I think the nice point of doing excercise in a web browser is that you can quickly switch to another tab and search for daring questions such as " by the way why on earth does this monstrosity want me to use hjkl? That don't make any sense!!!!" https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys For a mostly data/SQL guy wanting to learn more about coding it still don't make much sense but at least I know why…
Comment linking /why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys
on “Show HN: I built an online interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster”Submitted My favorite regex of all time as a story · 272 points
HN discussionNow split the second column, and you understand the keyboard layout of pre-microprocessor ASCII terminals like the Teletype 33¹ and vi's own ADM-3A² 011 010 0000 0 SP 0001 1 ! 0010 2 " 0011 3 # 0100 4 $ 0101 5 % 0110 6 & 0111 7 ' 1000 8 ( 1001 9 ) 1010 : * 1011 ; + 1100 < , 1101 = - 1110 > . 1111 ? / ¹ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TTY33ASR.jpg ² https://catonmat.net/images/why-vim-uses-hjkl/lsi-adm3a-full…
Comment linking /images/why-vim-uses-hjkl/lsi-adm3a-full-keyboard.jpg
on “History and Effective Use of Vim”Submitted My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part One as a story · 254 points
HN discussionTrue, but ESC was the next button. https://catonmat.net/images/why-vim-uses-hjkl/lsi-adm3a-full...
Comment linking /images/why-vim-uses-hjkl/lsi-adm3a-full-keyboard.jpg
on “History and Effective Use of Vim”Submitted Being good at coding competitions correlates negatively with job performance as a story · 251 points
HN discussionGood idea. Better idea - YC news from the console: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/follow-hacker-news-from-the-con... And, for old timers, there's always lynx.
Comment linking /blog/follow-hacker-news-from-the-console
on “At work? Try this Hacker News homepage inspired by Node [SFW]”Submitted Pipe Viewer – A Unix Utility You Should Know About as a story · 236 points
HN discussionYou're so wrong. I built it and they came. And when I say they, I mean millions of users. Here's my blog post about it: https://catonmat.net/if-you-build-it-they-will-come
Comment linking /if-you-build-it-they-will-come
on “The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)”Submitted Announcing Browserling: Interactive cross-browser testing in your browser as a story · 221 points
HN discussionthe other answer is also correct but you are correct as well! The machine vim was developed on didn't have arrow keys but used hjkl for arrows: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys...
Comment linking /blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys/
on “Interactive Vim tutorial”Submitted The computer revolution hasn’t happened yet (1997) as a story · 215 points
HN discussionPeteris Krumins - http://www.catonmat.net always has interesting bits on his blog.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?”Submitted My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part Three as a story · 214 points
HN discussionhttps://catonmat.net/ftp/perl1line.txt ?
Comment linking /ftp/perl1line.txt
on “Show HN: An eBook with hundreds of GNU Awk one-liners”Submitted My Favorite Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part Five as a story · 205 points
HN discussion
