Top all-time · #2226
Ilya Birman
Personal blog · ilyabirman.net/meanwhiledesignwriting
Ilya Birman's personal blog at ilyabirman.net covers design and writing. Since 2012, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 60 times, most often “The future of the web and native apps”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for Ilya Birman's typography keyboard layout for dashes and symbols, and for design work such as Moscow metro and rail maps, Chisinau street plates, and UI history pages.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Product and information designer. Author of books on user interface and transit maps. Art-director at Bureau Gorbunov
Most-linked posts?
- /typography-layout/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-10-30
- The future of the web and native apps3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-03-24
- Open Letter to Steve Lemay3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-05-30
- /meanwhile/all/ui-museum-turbo-pascal-7-1/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-20
- Likely – social sharing buttons that aren’t shabby2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-07
- Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need to replace every year (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-29
What Hacker News says?
The future repeats the past. This looks much like the back-end systems I used to design on TurboPascal in the late 1980s / early 1990s. https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/pictures/tp-80.png
Comment linking /meanwhile/pictures/tp-80.png
on “Building Rich Terminal Dashboards”Submitted Why are browsers so slow? as a story · 410 points
HN discussionDo yourself a favour and use typography layout https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout/
Comment linking /typography-layout/
on “We replaced H.264 streaming with JPEG screenshots (and it worked better)”Submitted Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need to replace every year (2013) as a story · 351 points
HN discussionAlso, it seems like his work is actually being used. He designed all the street plates for Chisnau, the capital of Moldova and they look pretty cool. https://ilyabirman.net/chisinau/
Comment linking /chisinau/
on “Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need to replace every year (2013)”Submitted Forebruary, an endless wall calendar as a story · 247 points
HN discussionIlya Birman's work is greatly underappreciated. His Moscow Metro map proposal[1] was pretty cool, and his commuter rail map[2] summarizes the routes much better than its predecessors. [1]: https://ilyabirman.net/moscow/metro/map/2016/ [2]: https://ilyabirman.net/moscow/rail/
Comment linking /moscow/rail/
on “Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need to replace every year (2013)”Submitted SIM Cards Must Die as a story · 148 points
HN discussionI’ve built a custom layout for that (and a bunch of other symbols I frequently use). ⌥ hyphen for en-dash, ⌥ ⇧ hyphen for em-dash (and ⌥ M is for minus): https://typo.ale.sh/ (The idea isn’t new, of course: the default macOS layout’s 3rd layer is absolutely bonkers. I think Ilya Birman was the first: https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout/ )
Comment linking /typography-layout/
on “Reverse engineering of Linear's sync engine”Submitted Forebruary as a story · 95 points
HN discussionThey most definitely could do a lot[1]. There was also overlays[2][3] and extended memory (EMS/XMS) which made it possible to use quite a lot of memory. [1]: https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/all/ui-museum-turbo-pascal-... [2]: http://www.oocities.org/~franzglaser/tpsrc/overlaytxt.html [3]: https://secondboyet.com/articles/publishedarticles/theslithy...
Comment linking /meanwhile/all/ui-museum-turbo-pascal-7-1/
on “Turbo Pascal Compiler in JavaScript”Submitted Modes in UI are bad; even worse are timed modes as a story · 62 points
HN discussionHow many other user interactions are generally considered objectively bad practice? Sure, there may be a time and place, but what is frequently overused? Toasts: - https://maxschmitt.me/posts/toasts-bad-ux - https://youtu.be/LeCKu0HqGFQ?si=xKApVFSqdzLGF0SD Modals (being a special case of modes): - https://modalzmodalzmodalz.com/ Modes: - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/modes/ - https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/all/…
Comment linking /meanwhile/all/timed-modes/
on “Should I Use a Carousel? (2013)”Submitted iOS Safari and Memory Management as a story · 39 points
HN discussionThe (centrifugal) layout's cool, too: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Mo... Or this alternate take: https://ilyabirman.net/projects/moscow-metro/map/2016/i/diag...
Comment linking /projects/moscow-metro/map/2016/i/diagram@fx.png?1490271378
on “Inside Moscow's Metro”Submitted Show HN: Emerge, a page load coordinator, adds video support as a story · 31 points
HN discussionYou might want to give Ilya Birman's Typography Layout a try: https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout/
Comment linking /typography-layout/
on “HN mining or: How I learned that there are some among us with soft quotes”Submitted Handholding as a web design approach: explain, guide, convince, clarify, warn as a story · 21 points
HN discussionIn Eastern Europe, a lot of computer-savvy people write with em dashes. I see two reasons behind that: 1. There is a highly popular Cyrillic keyboard layout with an em dash made by design educator Ilya Birman – https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout . 2. His colleague, Maxim Ilyahov is the author of an extremely popular book on writing good copy. Somehow, this book was a bestseller for years and was read by all ki…
Comment linking /typography-layout
on “Em dashes are fucking amazing”Submitted The future of the web and native apps as a story · 16 points
HN discussionYeah, remember good old Norton Commander ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander ) - not that newfangled clone Midnight Commander, the original? Or the Borland text mode IDEs ( https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/all/ui-museum-turbo-pascal-... ), complete with windows, menus, buttons, scroll bars, file dialogs etc. etc.?
Comment linking /meanwhile/all/ui-museum-turbo-pascal-7-1/
on “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool”Submitted Ångström is a unit converter with the most tap-efficient and smart UI as a story · 9 points
HN discussionAhem. https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout/ It has been available for 20 years. To use combining characters (and client-side font layout and rendering), type the letter, then one of available dead keys two times (e. g. `a, AltGr+Shift+6, AltGr+Shift+6` gives â). To get the single code point (if it's available), type modifier once, then the letter (e. g. `AltGr+Shift+6, a` gives â). I've been touch typing em das…
Comment linking /typography-layout/
on “The beauty and terror of modding Windows”Submitted Let Me Click as a story · 6 points
HN discussionYou can read about why projections still very much matter for large scale (which is what I think you meant; small scale would be something that shows you whole countries and not used for road navigation) maps in the article I linked. Google Maps tried out an alternative projection back when it was still Keyhole and ran into problems with angular distortion when zoomed in. The original post is sadly lost to Google sh…
Comment linking /meanwhile/all/map-and-reality-distortion/
on “Maps Distort How We See the World”Submitted Open Letter to Steve Lemay as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted All-caps in legal texts: make it small-caps as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Grids for web layouts with no gutters: simpler, more practical and more flexible as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A styling engine for Cocoa with Dropbox-sync and shake-to-refresh as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why and how to highlight hyperlinks on mouse hover as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
