Top all-time · #6664
PythonAnywhere News
Company blog · blog.pythonanywhere.comprogrammingweb
PythonAnywhere News is the company blog at blog.pythonanywhere.com, writing about programming and web. Since 2012, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “How many Python programmers are there in the world?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-04, 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 this blog as a source for an estimate of the number of Python users and for the author's experience comparing SockJS and Socket.IO. A commenter also links it for the history of Python-based spreadsheet projects.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- How many Python programmers are there in the world?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-09-06
- Ten Years On2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-05
- Learn how to code a Facebook app in 20 minutes with PythonAnywhere2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-31
- SockJS vs Socket.IO - Benchmarked2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-06-20
What Hacker News says?
Interestingly, Giles Thomas (the guy behind Python Anywhere) originally developed a Pythonic Spreadsheet application, called Resolver One, and then iterated to a a web-based version, called Project Dirigible. Python Anywhere eventually span out from Project Dirigible when they realised that it was mostly being used for "generic" Python development rather than being used as a spreadsheet. There's an interesting write…
Comment linking /197/
on “Pyspread – Pythonic Spreadsheet”Submitted Learn how to code a Facebook app in 20 minutes with PythonAnywhere as a story · 108 points
HN discussionI think it's a matter of numbers. There are a lot of people who use Python. ( https://blog.pythonanywhere.com/67/ estimates in the low millions.) Some of them like to work on alternate implementations of Python. I think Python is average in this respect. By comparison, here's an incomplete list of C compilers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers#C_compilers and you can also look at the list of Pascal comp…
Comment linking /67/
on “Nuitka: a Python compiler”Submitted Scaling a popular internet radio station as a story · 22 points
HN discussionNo serious issues -- Socket.IO was really good. But SockJS was noticeably faster, and we saw fewer cases where things arrived out-of-order -- blog post here: http://blog.pythonanywhere.com/27/ Also, IIRC the code we had to write to handle reconnects on patchy connections with SocketIO was pretty gruesome. The problem was that if the connection dropped, it would fail down from WebSockets through various polling syste…
Comment linking /27/
on “WebSocket proxy support added to nginx trunk”Submitted Developing PythonAnywhere on PythonAnywhere - Dogfooding part deux as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted Howto use PythonAnywhere to host your private git repos as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted SockJS vs Socket.IO - Benchmarked as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Blocked in Russia as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted How many Python programmers are there in the world? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted PythonAnywhere: Our Commitment to Providing Free Accounts as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unlimited private git repos for Python Developers as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted A beginner's guide to building a simple DB-backed Flask site on PythonAnywhere as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted XFS to ext4 for user storage – why PythonAnywhere made the switch as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Outage report; or, the perils of using 502s to initialize web applications as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted How many Python programmers are there in the world? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How do I serve static files using django & PythonAnywhere? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted PythonAnywhere on The Python trademark in Europe as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ten Years On as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Python Anywhere Blocked in Russia as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Learn how to code a Facebook app in 20 minutes on PythonAnywhere as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted New deploy! Python 2.7 is now the default, plus some perf. improvements as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted New release Hashbangs in Save & Run, infrastructure tweaks, new packages as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
