Top all-time · #7559
Martin Rue
Personal blog · martinrue.comprogrammingwriting
Martin Rue's personal blog at martinrue.com covers programming and writing. Since 2011, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 93 times, most often “Give Yourself More Playtime (2015)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, 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 Martin Rue's posts for a coding story about working around school computer restrictions and for Station, a Gemini social network he created that is still running.
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.
I build things on the internet.
Most-linked posts?
- /station3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-04-28
- Give Yourself More Playtime (2015)3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-03-29
- Coding Stories: Me vs. the VNC Guy2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-01-24
- My Engineering Axioms2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-12-21
- Today is Esperanto Day – here’s why I learned it2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-12-15
- ZZüy – A Lesson in Perseverance2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-11-07
- Nothing Matters2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-19
- JavaScript Chose Violence2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-06-26
What Hacker News says?
Awesome! Drop me a message when you're here, let's get coffee! All my info is at https://martinrue.com . Safe travels!
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2024)”Submitted Coding Stories: Me vs. the VNC Guy as a story · 375 points
HN discussionI wrote a couple more, both about amusing early programming experiences: C network programming: https://martinrue.com/zzuy-a-lesson-in-perseverance Commodore 64 & BASIC programming: https://martinrue.com/give-yourself-more-playtime
Comment linking /give-yourself-more-playtime
on “Coding Stories: Me vs. the VNC Guy”Submitted My Engineering Axioms as a story · 229 points
HN discussionThis is a really fun story, and I love your writing style! Thanks so much for posting this. A lot of my most creative stuff growing up came out of me needing to work around really weird restrictions in middle/high school. In a really weird way, I'm almost grateful for some of the arbitrary rules and setups because they created a similar environment to what people seek out nowadays with platforms like the Pico 8 -- l…
Comment linking /give-yourself-more-playtime/
on “Coding Stories: Me vs. the VNC Guy”Submitted How Does Esperanto Sound? as a story · 203 points
HN discussionI created one of the first social networks for it. Still running: https://martinrue.com/station
Comment linking /station
on “Project Gemini”Submitted Today is Esperanto Day – here’s why I learned it as a story · 174 points
HN discussionI have a funny story about this. I wrote a tool to create a situation that allowed me to kill VNC server when the college admin used to spy on me years back: https://martinrue.com/coding-stories-me-vs-vnc/
Comment linking /coding-stories-me-vs-vnc/
on “Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?”Submitted Give Yourself More Playtime (2015) as a story · 100 points
HN discussionSure: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLcWlBThjQPyrDDy3UIW8... I work on a few other Esperanto projects in my spare time. If anyone's curious: https://martinrue.com/projects/
Comment linking /projects/
on “Ask HN: What did you make during lockdown?”Submitted Do, as often as you can – it's that simple as a story · 75 points
HN discussionGemini for me has been such a breath of fresh air in contrast to 2025 Internet, with so many ads, grift and now AI slop. Back when I first discovered Gemini, I wanted to create a space for people to have a voice without needing to run their own server, so I built Station ( https://martinrue.com/station ). I've been running it ever since. Gemini in general, and specifically folk who use Station regularly, make it a f…
Comment linking /station
on “Six Years of Gemini”Submitted Today is Esperanto Book Day – why I learned it (2018) as a story · 69 points
HN discussionI made the first (and still popular) "social network" 4 years ago. Still going strong. More info: https://martinrue.com/station
Comment linking /station
on “Six Years of Gemini”Submitted Understand How It Works as a story · 37 points
HN discussionFor anyone craving more C64 nostalgia, I wrote about my first coding experience on the wonderful old beast: https://martinrue.com/give-yourself-more-playtime/
Comment linking /give-yourself-more-playtime/
on “Commodore 64 Program Discovered on 35-Year Old Vinyl Album (2019)”Submitted ZZüy – A Lesson In Perseverance as a story · 29 points
HN discussionGlad you enjoyed it! Originally I read about it on Wikipedia, and studied it just because it was super geeky and cool to me. Later I started attending events and met people, and at this point I have lots of international friends through the language. I wrote a bit more about this on my blog, which you may find interesting: https://martinrue.com/zamenhofa-tago-18
Comment linking /zamenhofa-tago-18
on “How Does Esperanto Sound?”Submitted What Is 'The Zone' Anyway? as a story · 19 points
HN discussionIf anyone’s curious, I wrote more about it here: https://martinrue.com/zamenhofa-tago-18/
Comment linking /zamenhofa-tago-18/
on “English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)”Submitted Subverting a password checker with a pair of scissors (2015) as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI wrote my thoughts up on this subject a while ago here: http://martinrue.com/posts/6/what-is-the-zone-anyway . I make the case for 'the zone' being a state that comes from really thinking about what you're doing and simply knowing how to start (and continue).
Comment linking /posts/6/what-is-the-zone-anyway
on “Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"?”Submitted To Be Productive, Be Prepared as a story · 7 points
HN discussionAnother shameless plug: I created the first social network for Gemini and have been running that for a couple of years now: https://martinrue.com/station
Comment linking /station
on “How to run a small social network (2019)”Submitted JavaScript Chose Violence as a story · 5 points
HN discussionEarly in my programming “career”, when I was about 15/16, I started writing network programs in C. I was fascinated by the idea that one program could send and receive data with another far far away. One particular story was a great lesson for me (I eventually ended up naming my company after it), and also pretty amusing. It’s not about undefined behaviour, but about not properly understanding C strings. If you’re c…
Comment linking /zzuy-a-lesson-in-perseverance
on “Ask HN: What's your worst undefined C story?”Submitted Creative Writing Systems for Esperanto as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe article is well-written and makes some good arguments about things that could be better, but like all languages (including conlangs), they're never going to be perfect and they're always going to have biases and rough bits. I started studying Esperanto 4 years ago and it has become a fluent second language for me at this point. I now almost have more friends who speak the language than don't. While the language…
Comment linking /articles
on “Esperanto is not my favourite artificial language (2002)”Submitted Me vs. the VNC Guy as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
