Top all-time · #7695
Nathan Friend
Personal blog · nathanfriend.io · on HN as nfriendprogramminghardware
Nathan Friend's personal blog at nathanfriend.io covers programming and hardware. Since 2014, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “Spirograph Simulator (2014)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link the author's browser-based spirograph tools, Inspirograph and inspiral-web, in threads about drawing spirograph curves. The comments do not assess the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Remote Software Engineer at Stripe and cellist based out of Ontario. Previously at GitLab. Fascinated with building usable, delightful software.
Most-linked posts?
- Spirograph Simulator (2014)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-12-04
- Online Spirograph Tool4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-07-06
- /inspirograph/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-08-31
What Hacker News says?
https://nathanfriend.io/
Comment linking /
on “Building a Kickass Portfolio”Submitted Spirograph Simulator (2014) as a story · 139 points
HN discussionI took this course for fun a few years ago - it was fantastic! I modified the project a bit to match my own interests - instead of compiling to an executable, my compiler generated browser-friendly JavaScript code. I built a small web application that uses my compiler and allows you to run COOL code in your browser: http://nathanfriend.io/cooltojs/
Comment linking /cooltojs/
on “Stanford Compilers Course”Submitted Online Spirograph Tool as a story · 120 points
HN discussionI learned of this one in year 2016: https://nathanfriend.io/inspiral-web/
Comment linking /inspiral-web/
on “HTML Spirograph (2021)”Submitted Inspirograph as a story · 117 points
HN discussionIts mentioned at the bottom of the article, but thought its worth calling out here too: https://nathanfriend.io/inspirograph/
Comment linking /inspirograph/
on “Drawing Spirograph curves in Python”Submitted A light that glows when on a Zoom call as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA little art game I built for iOS and Android: https://inspiral.nathanfriend.io/ (It's the mobile version of https://nathanfriend.io/inspiral-web/ )
Comment linking /inspiral-web/
on “Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2020?”Submitted Inspirograph: For Those Missing Spirograph as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLocation: Prince Edward Island, Canada (although it's worth noting that I'm a US citizen) Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: TypeScript, Angular, Node, ASP.NET, Solr Résumé/CV: https://nathanfriend.io/assets/Nathan%20Friend%20-%20R%C3%A9... Email: hello@nathanfriend.io Hi, I'm Nathan Friend. I'm a front-end engineer based out of Prince Edward Island Canada, although I'm originally from the US. I speci…
Comment linking /projects
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2018)”Submitted Inspirograph as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://nathanfriend.io/ Very infrequent updates on my latest side projects.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Inspiral Web – Gear Simulator as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHi HN! A number of years ago, a side project of mine ( https://nathanfriend.io/inspirograph/ ) hit the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8698131 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256222 Today I'm releasing the mobile app version for both iOS and Android. It's built with Flutter, and in-app payments are processed by RevenueCat. Source code is available at https://gitlab.com/nfriend/inspiral . Le…
Comment linking /inspirograph/
on “Show HN: Inspiral”Submitted I Built a Weird Keyboard as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Inspirograph as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
