Top all-time · #4180
Justin Meiners
Personal blog · jmeiners.comprogramminggames
Justin Meiners's personal blog at jmeiners.com covers programming and games. Since 2022, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “Write Your Own Virtual Machine (2022)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Justin Meiners' pages as archives and resources: pre-rendered FF7 backgrounds, an archived HTML copy of SICP, and an LC-3 virtual machine guide for practising bitwise operations.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Write Your Own Virtual Machine (2022)8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-07-12
- Efficient Programming with Components (2021)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-12-11
- Thinking Styles from Math2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-19
What Hacker News says?
For those reading who may not remember or have played the original FF7, here are links to pre-rendered backgrounds in FF7: https://www.jmeiners.com/pre-rendered-backgrounds/img/ff7.jp... and the image in the article about Meta's library: https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/blogs/2023-july-blog-...
Comment linking /pre-rendered-backgrounds/img/ff7.jpg
on “Meta releases Intermediate Graphics Library”Submitted Write Your Own Virtual Machine (2022) as a story · 338 points
HN discussionArchived copy here: https://www.jmeiners.com/sicp-html-original/book.html Justin's GitHub states: "MIT just recently took down the book from their own site (why?!)" Source: https://github.com/justinmeiners/sicp-html-original It looks like MIT Press released a Javascript version of SICP that is for sale: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262543231/structure-and-interpr...
Comment linking /sicp-html-original/book.html
on “Ask HN: Where to find HTML version of SICP?”Submitted Think in math, write in code (2019) as a story · 208 points
HN discussionI argue that (good) literate programming can make code literature. Your program is told as a sort of story and ought to contain background info, thought processes, and rationale for decisions. Additionally macros can be used to reuse code at build ('tangle') time that your underlying language may not otherwise support. For example if I have some constants i need throughout a python program, I might put it in somethi…
Comment linking /lc3-vm/
on “Code Is Not Literature”Submitted An Adventure in Pre-Rendered Backgrounds (2019) as a story · 44 points
HN discussionOne fun way to get familiar with bitwise operations is writing a virtual machine, as it involves a lot of masking and shifting bits from instructions to extract relevant pieces (dare I say bits) of information. If anyone is interested in going this route, I recommend LC-3, as it's very straightforward. https://www.jmeiners.com/lc3-vm/
Comment linking /lc3-vm/
on “The Magic of Bits “Bitwise””Submitted Write Your Own Virtual Machine as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Write Your Own Virtual Machine as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Write Your Own Virtual Machine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thinking Styles from Math as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Write Your Own (LC-3) Virtual Machine as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Take Your Time as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thinking Styles from Math (2022) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Efficient Programming with Components as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Efficient Programming with Components (2021) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Write Your Own Virtual Machine as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
