Top all-time · #5624
Oatmeal
Personal blog · eli.li · on HN as eli_oatprogrammingculture
Oatmeal is a personal blog at eli.li about programming and culture. Since 2014, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “December Adventure (Advent of Code alternative)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-27, 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 Oatmeal for personal writing on small projects, including the December Adventure series, an awk-inspired language, and anime essays.
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.
The latest entries posted on Oatmeal
Most-linked posts?
- December Adventure (Advent of Code alternative)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-12-01
- Constraint Propagation for Fun3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-08
- Make Awk rawk: A preprocessor for Awk, written in Awk2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-30
- Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-02
- My not so pragmatic guide to running background services on macOS2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-10
- The Seed Beneath the Snow2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-04-07
What Hacker News says?
A friend recently shared this with me. I think you'll like it. https://eli.li/december-adventure
Comment linking /december-adventure
on “Advent of Code 2024”Submitted Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits as a story · 244 points
HN discussionLittle projects for December Adventure ( https://eli.li/december-adventure ) - Just finished forking an nvim keycast script for TUI demos: https://github.com/wong-justin/showkeys-noplug - Started making a Roku app ( https://wonger.dev/nuggets#n299 ) - Drafting a year-in-review post for my website - Drafting a book review for "Programmers at Work"
Comment linking /december-adventure
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)”Submitted I'm working on implementing a programming language all my own as a story · 89 points
HN discussionRawk deserves it’s own HN post: https://eli.li/make-awk-rawk
Comment linking /make-awk-rawk
on “I'm working on implementing a programming language all my own”Submitted December Adventure (Advent of Code alternative) as a story · 16 points
HN discussionWhatever GGP was referring to, I'm sure it'll all turn out OK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRVhWPignvU Anime as escapist might mean that characters who read as exotically confrontational wrt japanese mores might read as exotically non-confrontational wrt to us mores? (compare https://eli.li/gundam-is-just-the-same-as-jane-austen-but-ha... ; to what extent does Asuka's personality in NGE reflect her ハーフ backgroun…
Comment linking /gundam-is-just-the-same-as-jane-austen-but-happens-to-include-giant-mech-suits
on “The Weeb Economy”Submitted Bicross as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted My not so pragmatic guide to running background services on macOS as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Answering some questions about Baba Yaga as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hyper Bf as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Seed Beneath the Snow as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Constraint Propagation for Fun as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Make Awk rawk: A preprocessor for Awk, written in Awk as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted December Adventure – Low key coding every day of December as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Kiki – An Array Language as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Seed Beneath the Snow as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Constraint Propagation for Fun as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Constraint Propagation for Fun as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted No Beautiful Things as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted My not so pragmatic guide to running background services on macOS as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Story of Life as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Designing a digital safety net for microadventurers as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How do you design for connection? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion