Top all-time · #2295
Josh On Design
Personal blog · joshondesign.comprogrammingdesignwriting
Josh On Design is a personal blog at joshondesign.com about programming, design and writing. Since 2011, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 69 times, most often “Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Josh Haberman's posts on modular OS design (Ideal OS), typographic programming (TypoPL), the Palm acquisition, and parsers, often as related reading on those topics.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Former Palm employee says the article's account is correct; others recommend the modularity essay and find TypoPL interesting.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-08-20
- Typographic Programming Language3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-08-22
- Building a Web Browser in Rust2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-04-24
- Why You Can't Build a Smartphone2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-12-02
- Why don't we have Wayland on Raspberry Pi yet? (2018)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-04-23
- Concise Computing: a PNG parser in 20 lines2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-03-18
- HTML Canvas: Deep Dive2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-21
- Solving the NPM Problem at Scale2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-03-24
What Hacker News says?
Former Palm employee here. I was a developer advocate working directly with app devs from a couple of months before Palm was acquired until after the shutdown. I remember Phil and rather liked him. Everything he states in the article is correct as far as I remember it. Yes we were being slammed by the iPad, but we were far and away the #2 tablet that summer. Android tablets really sucked then, and despite Google's p…
Comment linking /2012/06/06/webos-on-the-verge
on “I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it”Submitted Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System as a story · 656 points
HN discussion> In the screenshot below the user is lifting the edge of a window up to see what's underneath. That's super cool! > https://joshondesign.com//images2/lift-window.png Is this a sarcasm? Because it is complete garbage.
Comment linking //images2/lift-window.png
on “Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System”Submitted Why You Can't Build a Smartphone as a story · 237 points
HN discussionDoes implementing TCP/IP stack using the RFC (as in parsing diagrams straight from RFC) counts? Then it was done in OMeta [1]. Previous discussion: A full TCP/IP stack in under 200 LoC (and the power of DSLs) [2]. There's also a PNG parser (but it is not parsing any documentation) in 20 lines of OMeta [3]. [1] http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law-software... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84…
Comment linking /2013/03/18/ConciseComputing
on “A Formal Spec for GitHub Flavored Markdown”Submitted Why You Should Hire an Old Programmer as a story · 217 points
HN discussionI'm impressed. It runs my dev blog quite well. Some of the CSS alignment is off and it doesn't load web fonts, but it looks basically the same as Chrome. Even the syntax highlighted code snippets work. https://joshondesign.com/2025/09/16/embedded_rust_03
Comment linking /2025/09/16/embedded_rust_03
on “Dillo, a multi-platform graphical web browser”Submitted Why don't we have Wayland on Raspberry Pi yet? (2018) as a story · 184 points
HN discussionUpdate: I'm skimming here ( https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/whats-cool-about-unison/ ) and here ( https://joshondesign.com/2012/04/09/open-letter-language-des... ) and I see Unison is serious about not having raw text source code as the ground truth. I'm intrigued but don't totally understand yet. I'm sure this analogy is technically incorrect but: This reminds me of Smalltalk and old Lisps on mainframes shared by ma…
Comment linking /2012/04/09/open-letter-language-designers
on “Unison Programming Language”Submitted Typographic Programming Language as a story · 107 points
HN discussionFormer Mozilla employee here. The fact that they are writing their own bytestream abstraction does not bode well. That said, I hope they succeed at shipping something, even if it’s not competitive with Chrome. My previous thoughts on the topic: Why you can’t build a web browser and why you should anyway. https://joshondesign.com/2022/12/14/browser_1000_loc
Comment linking /2022/12/14/browser_1000_loc
on “Gosub – An open-source browser engine”Submitted Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System (2017) as a story · 83 points
HN discussionI've been working on similar stuff here: http://joshondesign.com/2014/08/22/typopl
Comment linking /2014/08/22/typopl
on “Rust Guide”Submitted 60sec Review: Rust Language – why it is so popular as a story · 11 points
HN discussionBecause developers don't bother to read books like "Filthy Rich Clients" and "Swing Hacks: Tips and Tools for Killer GUIs", or aren't even aware they exist. http://filthyrichclients.org/ https://joshondesign.com/c/writings Don't use library components like JGoodies, http://www.jgoodies.com/ Also many just write everything on the UI thread, thus making the application unresponsive. Swing can be used to make nice look…
Comment linking /c/writings
on “Java 11 released”Submitted iframe, you are dead to me as a story · 11 points
HN discussionMeant 0.90 cents. "Why isn't the internet more simple?" I guess it's the same reason why we don't use modularity in operating systems and applications. We have gotten used to how things have been done until now. Recommend reading this article since this ideas have been in my head for some time. https://joshondesign.com/2017/08/18/idealos_essay Disclaimer: this isn't my article. Doesn't mean that this things can't be…
Comment linking /2017/08/18/idealos_essay
on “All 50 startups from Y Combinator’s Summer 2017 Demo Day 1”Submitted Over 40 Years, Has Software Gotten Better or Worse? as a story · 10 points
HN discussionwhere the X and Y are either slight italics or underlined or colored You might find this interesting if you're thinking along those lines: http://joshondesign.com/2014/08/22/typopl
Comment linking /2014/08/22/typopl
on “What's New in C# 6.0 [video]”Submitted Why You Can't Build a Smartphone (2013) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionVisual programming does not have to mean 100% not text. https://joshondesign.com/2014/08/22/typopl
Comment linking /2014/08/22/typopl
on “Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?”Submitted An open letter to language designers: Kill your sacred cows. as a story · 8 points
HN discussionWhat was that about "You Can't Build a Smartphone"? http://joshondesign.com/2013/12/02/nosmartphone
Comment linking /2013/12/02/nosmartphone
on “Yotaphone”Submitted Building a Rust Web Browser (8-part series) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionA bit, yes. Like in any GUI toolkit, one needs to have the taste and knowledge how to make into reality the wishes of a designer, or be a designer themselves. On Swing's case taking the effort of reading books like "Filthy Rich Clients" and "Swing Hacks: Tips and Tools for Killer GUIs". http://filthyrichclients.org/ https://joshondesign.com/c/writings And be aware of cool 3rd party components like http://www.jgoodie…
Comment linking /c/writings
on “A Preview of C# 8 [video]”Submitted Why You *Can* Build a Smartphone as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHi. I'm Josh, the original author. Sorry, I didn't realize someone posted this to HackerNews. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I've also posted a follow up to my blog, this time focusing on fonts. http://joshondesign.com/2014/08/25/typopl2
Comment linking /2014/08/25/typopl2
on “Typographic Programming Language”Submitted WebOS on The Verge as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe author's most recent post on this topic is here (2022): https://joshondesign.com/2022/09/21/idealos_mark6
Comment linking /2022/09/21/idealos_mark6
on “Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System (2017)”Submitted HTML Canvas: Deep Dive as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
