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magnushoff.com
Personal blog · magnushoff.com/blog · on HN as maggitprogrammingsystems
magnushoff.com is a personal blog at magnushoff.com about programming and systems. Since 2014, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 21 times, most often “Dependency-Free JavaScript”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for a Minesweeper variant that makes guessing explicit, and a post explaining JPEG orientation problems in browsers. Commenters call the first a neat puzzle game and the second a good description.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Dependency-Free JavaScript4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-01-11
- /articles/minesweeper/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-12-26
What Hacker News says?
I recently did a write-up of my experience with writing maintainable code with vanilla JS: https://magnushoff.com/blog/dependency-free-javascript/ I am a huge fan of React for the maintainability of the resulting code, and this was my attempt to regain some of that without the dependency.
Comment linking /blog/dependency-free-javascript/
on “How to manage HTML DOM with vanilla JavaScript only?”Submitted Solving Minesweeper and making it better (2015) as a story · 271 points
HN discussionI have recently experimented with writing dependency-free JS. I ended up using Webpack and Babel, but no frameworks or libraries, and I find it quite nice to work with. These are my tips for making the best of it: https://magnushoff.com/blog/dependency-free-javascript/
Comment linking /blog/dependency-free-javascript/
on “Mini projects built with VanillaJS. No frameworks or libraries”Submitted Wwwwayland sucks (2018) as a story · 28 points
HN discussionGreat read! It's in a similar vein as the variant I developed, which makes you declare that you are in a situation that requires a guess. I don't use an SAT solver, and I prepopulate the board. https://magnushoff.com/articles/minesweeper/ In comparison to the Simon Tatham version mentioned at the end of the article, my game allows all game configurations while Tatham's version guarantees solvability by restricting t…
Comment linking /articles/minesweeper/
on “Kaboom: an unusual Minesweeper”Submitted Dependency-Free JavaScript as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI prefer the version by Magnus Hovland Hoff [1], which makes the guessing explicit. There is a "Request Help" button that will let you reveal any square you want - but only if there is no other way to progress without guessing (otherwise you lose). This turns Minesweeper into a neat little puzzle game. [1]: https://magnushoff.com/articles/minesweeper/
Comment linking /articles/minesweeper/
on “Pure Skill Minesweeper”Submitted Id30: An Identifier Scheme for URLs as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI have realized that there is a big design space here, as I recently did a write-up of my take, Id30. 30 bits of information encoded base 32 into six chars, eg bpv3uq, zvaec2 or rfmbyz, with some handling of ambiguous chars on decoding. https://magnushoff.com/blog/id30/
Comment linking /blog/id30/
on “Understanding and avoiding visually ambiguous characters in IDs”Submitted PlainTalk – a simple network protocol syntax as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere was a Minesweeper on here that used a SAT solver, but I cannot find it at the moment. As I recall, it never had any issue with resolving the board quickly. I think it dynamically resolved where the mines would be as you played the game, and if you clicked a square that could be a mine, it would be a mine, except, I believe, when there were no open squares that were safe. (Edit: Here it is! https://pwmarcz.pl/k…
Comment linking /articles/minesweeper/
on “Minesweeper thermodynamics”Submitted Writing Dependency-Free JavaScript as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf you are interested in variants of minesweeper, this one is awesome: https://magnushoff.com/articles/minesweeper/ (scroll to the bottom)
Comment linking /articles/minesweeper/
on “One Square Minesweeper”Submitted Actually getting started with Portable Native Client as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAh, let me throw my take on Minesweeper into the ring as well: http://magnushoff.com/minesweeper/ My final variant is like the original Minesweeper except that when you are provably stuck, the game will help you to move on.
Comment linking /minesweeper/
on “Algorithmic Approaches to Playing Minesweeper (2015)”Submitted Writing Dependency-Free JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYep. Here's a good description of the issue, with examples that will show if the browser is the problem: https://magnushoff.com/articles/jpeg-orientation/
Comment linking /articles/jpeg-orientation/
on “A better compact image placeholder hash”Submitted Working with the JPEG/EXIF orientation tag as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Id30: Humanized IDs for URLs and More as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing Dependency-Free JavaScript as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Solving Minesweeper (2015) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion