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Matt Widmann
Personal blog · mattwidmann.net/notesprogrammingproductivity
Matt Widmann's personal blog at mattwidmann.net covers programming and productivity. Since 2023, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Matt Widmann's notes on the nvi text editor and a list of DIY pen plotter projects. They are used as reference material for learning vi and building plotters.
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.
The personal website of Matt Widmann.
What Hacker News says?
If a DIY plotter would do, this site has a long list of different projects https://mattwidmann.net/notes/pen-plotters/
Comment linking /notes/pen-plotters/
on “How to build a printer”I have experimented a bit with using vi(1) as my main editor to better understand where vim(1) came from. Overall, it is a very functional editor with my rather minimal `.exrc`: set autoindent set ruler set showmode My biggest struggle has been finding good resources to learn the "proper" way to use it as pretty much any search will land you with vim-isms and no one "serious" really uses vi(1). Matt Widmann did writ…
Comment linking /notes/entering-control-key-chords-into-nvi
on “The original source code of the vi text editor, taken from System V”Hi :) Do you have a place for any nvi tips and tricks? Or any macros you have shared? So far I have Matt Widmann's notes: https://mattwidmann.net/notes/the-nvi-text-editor/ vi mail archive (not much, mirrored) Learning the vi and vim editors (O'Reilly) johnsonjh@github work on OpenVi: https://github.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi HN comments around OpenVi, nvi, etc: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394952
Comment linking /notes/the-nvi-text-editor/
on “Genealogy of Vim (2017)”