Top all-time · #17
Peter Norvig
Personal blog · norvig.comprogrammingai
Peter Norvig's personal blog at norvig.com covers programming and ai. Since 2007, 907 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,598 times, most often “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN links Norvig's essays and code for the 21-line spelling corrector, the Lisp interpreter in Python, the sudoku solver, 'Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years', and the Chomsky vs statistics essay.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Called a classic that holds up; code and prose eloquent; 'a work of art'; 'very good and accessible'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)195 people · 251 mentions · first linked 2007-05-10
- Sudoku Solving61 people · 63 mentions · first linked 2008-01-15
- How to Write a Spelling Corrector58 people · 69 mentions · first linked 2007-08-15
- (How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python))45 people · 47 mentions · first linked 2010-09-30
- On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning44 people · 47 mentions · first linked 2011-05-27
- Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation (2007)29 people · 245 mentions · first linked 2007-11-14
- How to Write a Spelling Corrector (2007)29 people · 36 mentions · first linked 2019-02-28
- Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)28 people · 39 mentions · first linked 2016-10-09
- Python for Lisp Programmers (2000)27 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2007-06-22
- Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle (2006)24 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2019-06-10
What Hacker News says?
The future we were promised when we bought into what lisp would/could be, with all the practicality we see now in python. Norvig wrote about it more here: http://www.norvig.com/python-lisp.html It was from that article when I gave python a serious try and it stuck with me as a go to language for all the small things one does often, but also exploratory programming as well (with iPython/jupyter).
Comment linking /python-lisp.html
on ““I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL””Submitted Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) as a story · 586 points
HN discussionJudging from his performance review, there's definitely room for improvement :) http://norvig.com/performance-review.html
Comment linking /performance-review.html
on “Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. ”Submitted How to Write a Spelling Corrector as a story · 401 points
HN discussionA 30 line javascript spreadsheet is similar for me to when I first saw Norvig's 21 line python spelling corrector ( http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html ): this language is more powerful and expressive than I thought. I'm increasingly believing that HTML/CSS/JS in a browser is a viable common runtime. This demo does quite a lot to solidify that belief.
Comment linking /spell-correct.html
on “A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used”Submitted How to write a spelling corrector (2016) as a story · 346 points
HN discussionThis is always my go to example of a 10x programmer: https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html How many developers do you know that would bang out a spelling corrector on a single plane flight, in half a page of code? It's a question of knowing the algorithms of tools that make things possible that other developers might not even consider, and how to express those ideas cleanly and concisely, evaluate your solution, and…
Comment linking /spell-correct.html
on “Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer”Submitted On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning as a story · 313 points
HN discussionFor specific domains, like drone control, you can achieve much better accuracy then you typically see in "dictation"-style speech recognition. You can use a statistical language model that represents the things you're most likely to hear. For example, Google & Siri kind of need to be able to handle anything I throw at them: "What is Ke$ha's new album?" "What year was the Hardy Boys book 'Hunting For Hidden Gold' wri…
Comment linking /ngrams/ch14.pdf
on “Lily – Drone camera”Submitted On the (Small) Number of Atoms in the Universe as a story · 298 points
HN discussionThis? http://norvig.com/chomsky.html
Comment linking /chomsky.html
on “Marvin Minsky dies at 88”Submitted Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) as a story · 253 points
HN discussionI'll state my requirements - for anyone interested in meeting them: I have an OLKB preonic. And I used QMK to significantly modify my layout. I started out with the modified Colemak - but the re-arranged the keys to move keys which require the index finger to move to the side - on the QWERTY that would for example be G and H . I moved B and K forexample where Z and X are on the Qwerty - and moved Z and X to the numb…
Comment linking /mayzner.html
on “I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard”Submitted List of IPython Notebooks by Peter Norvig as a story · 234 points
HN discussionIf you're a scientist who works in protein folding (or one of those other areas) and strongly believe that science's goal is to produce falsifiable hypotheses, these new approaches will be extremely depressing, especially if you aren't proficient enough with ML to reproduce this work in your own hands. If you're a scientist who accepts that probabilist models beat interpretable ones (articulated well here: https://n…
Comment linking /chomsky.html
on “AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules”Submitted (How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python)) as a story · 222 points
HN discussionI'd love to hear Chomsky's reaction to this stuff (or someone in his camp on the Chomsky vs. Norvig debate [0]). My understanding is that Chomsky was against statistical approaches to AI, as being scientifically un-useful - eventual dead ends, which would reach a certain accuracy, and plateau - as opposed to the purer logic/grammar approaches, which reductionistically/generatively decompose things into constituent p…
Comment linking /chomsky.html
on “Announcing SyntaxNet: The World’s Most Accurate Natural Language Parser”Submitted Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle (2006) as a story · 202 points
HN discussionSpecialist interests will destroy the purity of both parties so it's no use arguing over numbers like that. It's a matter of choosing the lesser evil. Peter Norvig, who is a god among the mere mortals here, makes a better case than I could http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html
Comment linking /election-faq-2012.html
on “Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes”Submitted (How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (In Python)) (2010) as a story · 193 points
HN discussionWhat? Are you denying Romnesia, or the lies that led to the Iraq war. Or Nixon's party. Or that the military-industrial xomplex and big oil is allied with republicans. Or Peter Norvig's analysis of who you should vote for http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html It's easy to call "troll" and try to sneakily shout out the other person. You should try some self-reflection if you're a republican. If you've got enough i…
Comment linking /election-faq-2012.html
on “Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes”Submitted Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) as a story · 187 points
HN discussionDefine interesting. I was helping a few people on getting started with an Android Development bootcamp and just being able to run the default example and get their bearing around the IDE was interesting to them. And I remember when I was first learning python. Just doing basic variable declaration and arithmetic was interesting. Same with learning C and being able to write tic-tac-toe. I think a lot of harm is being…
Comment linking /21-days.html
on “AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'”Submitted Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) as a story · 186 points
HN discussionKind of OT, but... according to his CV Norvig was the Chief Designer for Harlequin?! http://norvig.com/resume.html
Comment linking /resume.html
on “Norvig's Python programs to practice or demonstrate skills”Submitted Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998) as a story · 184 points
HN discussionHe shows a more complete version in another essay http://norvig.com/lispy2.html
Comment linking /lispy2.html
on “Norvig's Python programs to practice or demonstrate skills”Submitted Spelling Corrector in 21 lines of Python as a story · 181 points
HN discussionI really like his (How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python)) : http://norvig.com/lispy.html You learn to build a lisp interpreter in about 100 lines of python (you miss a few features like macros, but it's still quite complete). Very nice to learn how language interpretation works
Comment linking /lispy.html
on “Norvig's Python programs to practice or demonstrate skills”Submitted English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited as a story · 180 points
HN discussion
