Top all-time · #11794
John Jacobsen
Personal blog · johnj.com · on HN as eigenhombreprogramminghardware
John Jacobsen's personal blog at johnj.com covers programming and hardware. Since 2011, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-07-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link this blog's post on porting a Clojure program to Common Lisp, which reports a large speed gain. The comments only cite it and do not judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /from-elegance-to-speed.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-10-13
What Hacker News says?
and here the author ports a Clojure program to Common Lisp with a x10 speed gain: http://johnj.com/from-elegance-to-speed.html . Sorry, x300.
Comment linking /from-elegance-to-speed.html
on “Show HN: Bel”Submitted (Yet Another) Lisp in Go as a story · 80 points
HN discussion> I basically want to build a custom e-reader with a RasPi Zero for learning/home use, 8-10inches would be great. Though smaller than your target size, I did[1] something similar, and it was great fun. I believe there are still Waveshare hats with larger display sizes. [1] https://johnj.com/posts/e-paper-rpi-display/
Comment linking /posts/e-paper-rpi-display/
on “E-paper display reaches the realm of LCD screens”Submitted Making a Tiny E-Paper Status Display for the Raspberry Pi Zero as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI loved Hofstadter's writing on Lisp in Metamagical Themas and adapted the code in the last article of the series to Clojure for a study group at work, written up here[1]. [1] http://johnj.com/posts/oodles/ edit: clarification
Comment linking /posts/oodles/
on “Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)”Submitted Programming Languages as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI write Clojure for food, and Common Lisp for fun. One reason for the latter is CL's speed -- awhile back I compared a bit of (non-optimized) Clojure code I wrote for a blog post with a rough equivalent in CL, and was stunned that the Common Lisp code ran about 10x faster. This made me curious as to how fast it could be made if I really tried, and was able to get nearly 30x more[1] by optimizing it. Clojure is defin…
Comment linking /from-elegance-to-speed.html
on “Learning Common Lisp to beat Java and Rust on a phone encoding problem”Its got to be a snippet. Suprisingly hard to track down with DDG or Google, though. Here's something pretty similar [0]. It's from a course powerpoint, and my guess would be a student or web searcher modified it. def eval(x, env=global_env): "Evaluate an expression in an environment." if isa(x, Symbol): return env.lookup(x) elif not isa(x, list): return x elif x[0] == 'quote': return x[1] elif x[0] == 'if': return e…
Comment linking /scheme-in-python.html
on “Github Copilot Wants to Play Chess Instead of Code”Highly recommended... I found it quite beautiful and moving, and it's the only film I've felt compelled to write a blog post[1] about. "Seeing the film (made just last year) transforms the memory of the Towers from one of trauma to something more like transcendence." [1] https://johnj.com/posts/man-on-wire/ [2009] Edit: add year
Comment linking /posts/man-on-wire/
on “The World Trade Center under construction through photos, 1966-1979”Saw a number of votes here for keeping them separate. Having struggled with the question for a long time, I'll voice my vote for unifying them. I've been a SWE for 25+ years and an artist for longer, showing art online as early as 1993 (anybody remember Gopher?), and blogging semi-regularly since the early 2000s. Originally I kept a strict separation between the two out of fear that people interested in one topic wo…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Should I consolidate my blogs into one?”Am tickled to see this here, having done these calculations myself in the same place several years running (due to summer visits at the Pole for work from 1997-2011). The author doesn't mention workouts. There are good gym facilities at the Pole, and there's nothing like a half-minute shower (the author's "Option 2") after using them. Now that I know there is an appetite for shower recipes, I'll share mine from 2011…
Comment linking /posts/shower-instructions/
on “Showering at the South Pole”Well, it seems people are still posting here, so here's mine: http://johnj.com "I post things here related to programming and art..... You can also find many blog posts written during ten trips to Antarctica here."
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”