Work in progress: 181,232 of 181,233 sites checked so far, more every week · updated 2 Nov 2026Missing a blog? Tell us

Top all-time · #12026

C

Collin Donnell

Personal blog · collindonnell.comprogrammingcareerculture

Collin Donnell's personal blog at collindonnell.com covers programming, career and culture. Since 2012, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “The Xerox Smalltalk-80 GUI Was Weird”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-27, and you can follow it by feed.

Visit the blog
18mentions?
6HN people?
2012–2023first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 5 in 2023

Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?

Why HN links it

HN readers discuss this post on the Xerox Smalltalk-80 GUI, including the history of Jobs' 1978 visit to PARC and what happened in desktop GUI development and at Apple in the following years.

Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.

Freelance software developer from Portland, Oregon.

Most-linked posts?

  1. The Xerox Smalltalk-80 GUI Was Weird
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-02

What Hacker News says?

  1. > "Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? TFA ( https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-wei... ). > Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. Not in desktop GUI land, since nobody did anything interesting commercially in desktop GUIs for those next 4 years. And of course in those 4 years Apple started the project, designed the hardware and implemented the OS,…

    Comment linking /the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-weird

    on “The Xerox Smalltalk-80 GUI Was Weird”
  2. Submitted The Brilliance of “nil” in Objective-C as a story · 91 points

    HN discussion
  3. Submitted Installing Fonts Using Homebrew as a story · 71 points

    HN discussion
  4. Submitted MVC Isn’t MVC as a story · 8 points

    HN discussion
  5. Submitted Meat Is Killing Our Planet and We Won’t Even Talk About It as a story · 8 points

    HN discussion
  6. Submitted The state of Mac code editors as a story · 7 points

    HN discussion
  7. Submitted Getting Started with Meditation and Preparing for What Comes Next as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  8. Submitted No More Activity Rings as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  9. Submitted The Products Apple Doesn’t Have Time to Improve as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  10. Submitted The Xerox Smalltalk-80 GUI Was Weird as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  11. Submitted You're Never Going to Fix Your Technical Debt as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  12. Submitted Implementing a Personal Transportation Hierarchy as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  13. Submitted More Parseable Output, Please as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  14. Submitted Pilot Vanishing Point 2019 Limited Edition as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  15. Submitted What if Apple Got Rid of Star Ratings? as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  16. Submitted UIManagedDocument for Core Data Apps as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  17. Submitted Nicer Segue Preparation With Storyboards as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  18. Submitted Release and Creation of Pinbook (Pinboard client for OS X) as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion

Search all of HN for collindonnell.com