Top all-time · #13516
Mu
Personal blog · mlajtos.mu/posts · on HN as mlajtosprogrammingdesign
Mu is a personal blog at mlajtos.mu about programming and design. Since 2021, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 51 times, most often “New Kind of Paper”. 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
Mu's "New Kind of Paper" series about a notebook-style environment for math and APL-like ideas. HN commenters link it as related work when discussing APL and symbolic mathematics.
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.
Public record of random stuff that my mind generates
Most-linked posts?
- New Kind of Paper4 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2021-06-21
- Thinking, Fast and Slow2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-21
What Hacker News says?
APL desperately needs its renaissance. Original vision was hand-written, consistent, and executable math notation. This was never accomplished. If you are into this, read ahead: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper
on “Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)”Submitted New Kind of Paper as a story · 205 points
HN discussionParsing traditional 2D math notation is super hard problem and this is first public version. Things will get better with time. But you hit the nail on the head with "narrow undefined subset". Documentation on Math Notes is almost non-existent. There are standards for math notation, so I guess they will announce it when they match parity. Again, too soon. I agree that capabilities are extremely limited. More than CAS…
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
on “Apple introduces iPad mini built for Apple Intelligence”Submitted My Notes on Apple Math Notes as a story · 178 points
HN discussionThe trick with overlaying colorful rectangle on top of handwritten glyphs is the same thing I did for New Kind of Paper [0]. Apple PencilKit has this weird behavior that when you change color of some stroke, the canvas freezes for some time and the experience is horrible. Overlaying SwiftUI rectangles on top is the easiest way. [0] https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper
on “Hyperlinks in Handwriting”Submitted Eye-tracking is a missing input device for VR experiences as a story · 134 points
HN discussionHaha, coding with pencil on paper (but modern) is actually pretty awesome: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper
on “Hyperlinks in Handwriting”Submitted Your Next Mac as a story · 33 points
HN discussion> When you write code on paper, you have no way to see if your code works. Maybe someday I’ll be able to handwrite code on an e-Ink device and then run it. I may be living in the future then. :D https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
on “How I Write Code: Pen and Paper”Submitted New Kind of Paper, Part Two as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIf you are into this kind of thing, you might like these essays from 2021: 1. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper 2. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-2 3. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-3 4. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-4 I mention various tech (APL, Sketchpad, RAND tablet, Pascaline, VisiCalc, etc.) while showing of demos of calculator designed for iPad & Pencil. I hope wr…
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-4
on “Inkbase: Programmable Ink (2022)”Submitted Finally a State Management (In React) for Dummies as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAPL started on blackboard, where writing weird math symbols is easy. Since we have computerized tablets with pencils now, it seems like a good idea to explore weird symbols again. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper
on “Much less than, Much greater than symbols”Submitted Thinking, Fast and Slow as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt is fantastic to see Jeremy from fast.ai tying modern tensor libraries to its origins in APL. If you are interested in this deep interconnection and what future might hold, please check out New Kind of Paper series. [0] [0]: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper
on “APL and Array Programming”Submitted New Kind of Paper (2021) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI am exploring pencil input for coding: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper What do you mean by "monadic style"?
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper
on “Show HN: A small, weird and unpractical programming language”Submitted How to Give Insanely Great Apple Vision Pro Demo as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou just reminded me of this link/series I found yesterday through HN Blogs newsletter[1]: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-4 [1] https://hnblogs.substack.com/p/hn-blogs-211121-bae
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-4
on “Symbolic Mathematics with Julia Language”Submitted Quo vadis, Jupyter? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIndeed. "Object-oriented" fluent notation is basically equivalent to infix notation. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
on “PyTorch Primitives in WebGPU for the Browser”Submitted Serverless Collaborative Hierarchical Todo App in 200 LoC as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAppending (or prepending) a single space to the prompt is the easiest jailbreak I found. Source: https://mlajtos.mu/posts/chatgpt-jailbreak
Comment linking /posts/chatgpt-jailbreak
on “All the ways to get around ChatGPT's safeguards”Submitted New Kind of Paper, Pt. 3: Chalktalk, Magic Paper, APL, PyTorch and Pascaline as a story · 2 points
HN discussionReject PEMDAS, return to monky: x * 2 + 1 - 3 % x https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
on “Why Lisp Syntax Works”Submitted New Kind of Paper (2021) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHello Adám, thank you for the LPA notes – they are still very inspirational and reassured me that LTR is worth exploring. If you found out something new, I would love to read it. I am aiming private beta for the end of 09/2021. The language, runtime and interface are in a good shape, however the handwriting recognition have seen only my glyphs so far. Also segmentation algorithm is something to think about when writ…
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-2
on “New Kind of Paper, Part Two”Submitted New Kind of Paper as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYou are exactly right that the original vision of APL was handwritten non-ambiguous executable math notation. This was never accomplished. In 2021 I made a prototype of calculator designed for iPad & Pencil and did four essays called "New Kind of Paper" which described this concept. Video demonstration of the prototype [Demo] sums up pretty well of how it might be used. In 2024, Apple released Math Notes that implem…
Comment linking /posts/new-kind-of-paper-5
on “In Praise of APL (1977)”Submitted Improbably Right as a story · 1 points
HN discussion