Top all-time · #1646
HookRace Blog
Personal blog · hookrace.net · on HN as def-programmingsystemsgames
HookRace Blog is a personal blog at hookrace.net about programming, systems and games. Since 2015, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 109 times, most often “Nim binary size from 160 KB to 150 Bytes (2015)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Nim binary size from 160 KB to 150 Bytes (2015)11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2016-08-04
- Writing a 2D Platform Game in Nim with SDL26 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-06-14
- What is special about Nim?5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2015-01-01
- Introduction to Metaprogramming in Nim4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-12-10
- Introduction to Metaprogramming in Nim4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-06-05
- /time.gif3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-02-25
- Overview of Running an Online Game for 3 Years2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-06-09
- HANA C++ Development Environment and Processes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-10
- Chinese Traffic to Time.gif · HookRace Blog2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-05-21
- Nim binary size from 160 KB to 150 Bytes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-05-04
What Hacker News says?
I guess the examples use the default std libs, and runtimes of the languages. So in this sense your D example is the misrepresentation, by directly calling libc. If these kinds of low level size optimizations are enabled then both Nim and Rust can be more than 50 times smaller than your D example ;) : 150 byte Nim: https://hookrace.net/blog/nim-binary-size/ 151 byte Rust: http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2…
Comment linking /blog/nim-binary-size/
on “Nim 1.0”Submitted Time.gif as a story · 563 points
HN discussionNim is a thing of beauty. It has a well-thought syntax (some consider it to be similar to Python, but it removes many Python idiosyncrasies), state of the art type system with generics, beyond state of the art macro system, excellent performance (comparable to Rust or C), and it can work as a low-level or a high-level language. It is pragmatic: you can write functional or imperative code, neither is imposed on you.…
Comment linking /blog/what-is-special-about-nim/
on “Nim 1.0”Submitted Linux Desktop Setup as a story · 437 points
HN discussionI'm from Status, Nim's main sponsor and a blockchain company that is doing Ethereum 2.0 research and implementation in Nim. Nim had the following appeal for us: - Ethereum research is done in Python, we actually started our code with a tool called py2nim to convert a 50k lines Python codebase to Nim in less than a month (and remove cruft for 3 months but that's another story). - Nim allows us to use a single languag…
Comment linking /nimes/
on “Nim 1.0”Submitted macOS Setup after 15 Years of Linux as a story · 347 points
HN discussionToo bad. I only tested with Firefox, Chrome and Android. You could try http://hookrace.net:5002/ directly Edit: I have now added some cache-control directives, maybe they help
Comment linking /
on “Time.gif”Submitted One year of cycling to work as a story · 295 points
HN discussionThere actually is one high-level Python-like language that really is almost "as fast as C". http://nim-lang.org I am using it for years already, and it is really performant, somewhere between C and Rust. I am still wondering why so few people use it. Benchmark: https://github.com/kostya/benchmarks Nim vs Rust: http://arthurtw.github.io/2015/01/12/quick-comparison-nim-vs... Performance discussion: http://forum.nim-la…
Comment linking /blog/nim-binary-size/
on “Crystal: Fast as C, Slick as Ruby”Submitted Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer as a story · 285 points
HN discussionCool. That reminded me of this blog post[0], with Hello World Nim binary in just 150 bytes! [0] - https://hookrace.net/blog/nim-binary-size/
Comment linking /blog/nim-binary-size/
on “Hello World”Submitted What is special about Nim? as a story · 269 points
HN discussionI'm reminded of this little gem: https://hookrace.net/time.gif (Relevant post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715 ) But on the topic: is there actually a dearth of APIs "these days" vs peak Web-2.0, or have the major players just restricted theirs due to abuse, and thus it seems like the whole world of possibilities have veen restricted? One can easily find lists of public apis (e.g https://github.com/n0sh…
Comment linking /time.gif
on “This Video Has X Views”Submitted Time.gif (2017) as a story · 216 points
HN discussionThanks jamesrom for the graph. Here is a website for /r/thebutton stats http://button.cstevens.me/ Here's a google doc of current record holders: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v7RV0R9Q133W2QAJSAEq... Raw data: http://hookrace.net/thebutton.txt
Comment linking /thebutton.txt
on “The button: social experiment driving Reddit crazy”Submitted Overview of Running an Online Game for 3 Years as a story · 197 points
HN discussionhttps://hookrace.net/blog/broken-hardware-fixes-hacks-8-year... https://hookrace.net/blog/new-hardware-hacks/
Comment linking /blog/new-hardware-hacks/
on “Linux Desktop Setup”Submitted DoS attacks against my online game as a story · 171 points
HN discussionOff topic, but I really enjoyed his post about commuting to work by bike[1]. I was in Krakow, Poland, and getting around by bike was a joy. Unfortunately, here in Ukraine drivers are very aggressive and the infrastructure for biking is just not in place. 1: https://hookrace.net/blog/cycling-to-work/
Comment linking /blog/cycling-to-work/
on “Linux Desktop Setup”Submitted Porting a NES Emulator from Go to Nim as a story · 158 points
HN discussionNim can execute code at compile time and store them in constants. http://nim-lang.org/manual.html#const-section example: http://hookrace.net/blog/what-is-special-about-nim/
Comment linking /blog/what-is-special-about-nim/
on “‘Braid’ creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game”Submitted A Taste of Haskell as a story · 157 points
HN discussionBy removing the C standard lib and using a custom linker you can get the Hello World down to 150 bytes. Here is a fun read: https://hookrace.net/blog/nim-binary-size/ .
Comment linking /blog/nim-binary-size/
on “A Programming Language Underdog”Submitted What makes Nim practical? as a story · 154 points
HN discussionD's binaries still aren't small[0], what with including the entire prelude without code elimination. Sure, they seem tiny alongside Electron, but a giant doesn't look big next to Jupiter. Nim competes in the same space, and seems to hit this problem a whole lot nicer. [1] [0] http://forum.dlang.org/thread/yhcopkgdkhclbkfpisut@forum.dla... [1] https://hookrace.net/blog/nim-binary-size/
Comment linking /blog/nim-binary-size/
on “Typora – A cross platform markdown editor”Submitted Nim binary size from 160 KB to 150 Bytes as a story · 145 points
HN discussionhttps://hookrace.net/time.gif - the same thing, but with an endless GIF
Comment linking /time.gif
on “An SVG that always shows today's date”Submitted Make a Lisp in Nim as a story · 102 points
HN discussionYep, that works well enough: http://hookrace.net/blog/what-makes-nim-practical/#debugging...
Comment linking /blog/what-makes-nim-practical/
on “Why I Write Games in C”Submitted Introduction to Metaprogramming in Nim as a story · 101 points
HN discussion
