Top all-time · #5203
Francis Irving
Personal blog · flourish.org/blog · on HN as frabcusprogrammingdata
Francis Irving's personal blog at flourish.org covers programming and data. Since 2010, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 37 times, most often “Vibe coding personal apps in mid-2026”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Francis Irving's Flourish blog for the upside-down world map and its historical background, plus a data-driven election campaign post and a page on the zbefunge Befunge environment.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Vibe coding personal apps in mid-20262 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-13
- Heroku’s early history: 4 home pages that made $212 million2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-05
- The Upside Down “Map”...think about it2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-16
- How to use time-traveling anthropologists to tell good from evil marketing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-13
What Hacker News says?
A long cold cyberwar http://www.flourish.org/2015/01/long-cold-cyberwar/
Comment linking /2015/01/long-cold-cyberwar/
on “GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack”Submitted History of version control - 10 astonishments as a story · 228 points
HN discussionThis might be a good time to sign the promise not to use C/C++ on new projects... http://www.flourish.org/promise/
Comment linking /promise/
on “CVE-2015-0235 – GHOST: glibc gethostbyname buffer overflow”Submitted Heroku’s early history: 4 home pages that made $212 million as a story · 96 points
HN discussionI agree - I've just made a simple promise pledge, as a ceremony to commit to not using C/C++ for new projects: http://www.flourish.org/promise/
Comment linking /promise/
on “New Snowden Docs Indicate Scope of NSA Preparations for Cyber Battle”Submitted Newsflash: Geeks now good at usability, everyone else crap as a story · 48 points
HN discussionGood marketing is part of a quality product. A key stage is hearing about a product at all - it is completely useless if you never hear about it. See my blog post "How to use time-travelling anthropologist pollsters to tell good from evil marketing": http://www.flourish.org/2013/04/how-to-use-time-travelling-a...
Comment linking /2013/04/how-to-use-time-travelling-anthropologist-pollsters-to-tell-good-from-evil-marketing/
on “Balanced payments is shutting down”Submitted I promise never to use C/C++ for a new project as a story · 18 points
HN discussionThe Innovator's Dilemma doesn't say you have to start at a "low end" and work up. That's just how it was for the computer storage industry (the example in the book) in the second half of the twentieth century. It says that you have to start with a new market - i.e a set of people who want to buy your product who are different fundamentally from the existing market. Plenty of innovations are rolled out starting at th…
Comment linking /blog/?p=371
on “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (2006)”Submitted Brainstorming a better YouTube recommendation algorithm as a story · 5 points
HN discussionA good page of examples with xcellent historical background: https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/
Comment linking /upsidedownmap/
on “The True Size of Africa (2015)”Submitted The Upside Down “Map”...think about it as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNote that I am not saying that the claims they made in their campaign were correct - far from it. What I mean is that they managed their campaign in a data driven and dynamic way - even to the point of hiring developers and writing their own polling platform VICS: https://www.flourish.org/2017/02/a-short-walk-around-vote-le... Both sides had crappy campaigns full of lies - the Vote Leave lot were unfortunately much…
Comment linking /2017/02/a-short-walk-around-vote-leaves-software-vics/
on “The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans”Submitted C/C++ Source Code Dependency Graphing (Via Perl Script and Graphviz) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYep - I switched from iPhone to Android and Tasker is much more powerful. Slightly less good UX and mainly systems focussed. But actually allows any trigger. Also extensible - it can trigger scripts in Termux. You can install any command line open source tool inside Termux and trigger it on tasks. eg When my home radiator thermostat stopped supporting IFTTT, I made a Python script to call their API and trigger it wi…
Comment linking /2023/11/netatmo-smart-thermostat-how-much-gas-i-saved-last-winter-and-how-to-automate-it-to-turn-off-when-out-not-using-ifttt/
on “Apple Shortcuts is falling into "the automation gap"”Submitted Vibe coding personal apps in mid-2026 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI for one prefer this map with New Zealand in the centre ;) http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/mcarthur-large.jpg
Comment linking /upsidedownmap/mcarthur-large.jpg
on “The True Size of Africa”Submitted Sync/Backup workshop at Redecentralize Conference as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmapimages/diversophy-larg...
Comment linking /upsidedownmapimages/diversophy-large.jpg
on “Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion”Submitted Astonishments, ten, in the history of version control as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI still find it hilarious that zbefunge is one of the best befunge environments I've used. It runs in the Infocom z-machine! https://www.flourish.org/zbefunge/
Comment linking /zbefunge/
on “A fungeoid is a typically multi-dimensional language similar to Befunge”Submitted How we used email as a customer support system at mySociety as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Product == market as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Part 2: Why I think PledgeBank failed, when GroupOn and Kickstarter flew as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vibe coding local first personal apps in mid-2026 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The frustration of agreeing with everyone about AI as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Instalamb, my browser plugin to control Instagram as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What is high-quality about the data that trained generative AI? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making our information society safe and fair as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The advert wars as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
