Top all-time · #1162
Technomancy
Personal blog · technomancy.us · on HN as technomancyprogrammingsystems
Technomancy is a personal blog at technomancy.us about programming and systems. Since 2008, 59 different Hacker News readers have linked it 100 times, most often “A game written in 4 Lisp dialects”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (24) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Phil Hagelberg's blog for Lisp-related writing: Fennel and Janet, Lisp Game Jam write-ups, Emacs and Clojure setup, and posts on Racket and Logo. Keyboard and personal posts also come up.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Game jam write-ups documenting Fennel and Love2D work, a pico-8 game written in Fennel, a Racket post, a cute bus scheme post, and a Logo post called an inspira
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 24 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- A game written in 4 Lisp dialects6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-07-18
- Atreus – kit to build your own mechanical keyboard4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-03-07
- In which a compiler gets its wings3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-03-04
- In which there is no such thing as a functional programming language3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-22
- In which persistence proves a propitious property3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-12-23
- In which interactive development saves the day3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-09-18
- In which five different paths lead to methods3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-02-08
- In which we take a deep breath before the upcoming plunge3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-12-17
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-10-25
- Http://technomancy.us/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-02-06
What Hacker News says?
Once you add networking, Arduinos don't really have much cost benefit over a full-fledged Linux SOC board. An Uno plus an Ethernet shield ends up being nearly the cost of a Raspberry Pi, which is several times more powerful. I built out my XMPP-controlled office thermostat on a BeagleBone Black, which costs a bit more than the Pi but has way more pins, including analog inputs, which are pretty important for temperat…
Comment linking /171
on “Building an open source Nest”Submitted Atreus – kit to build your own mechanical keyboard as a story · 135 points
HN discussionI worked remotely for two years out of LA as one of two engineers for a tiny startup, and that describes my experience there perfectly. I've been working remotely for the last three years out of Seattle, and it's totally different. Part of it is the availability of plenty of coffee shops from which to work ( http://technomancy.us/156 ), part of it is having more hacker friends locally with which to co-work, but a lo…
Comment linking /156
on “Stop whining and start hiring remote workers”Submitted Phil Hagelberg on Emacs new package manager. as a story · 83 points
HN discussionI'd love to hear more from the author (can someone interview him for a podcast please? :-). He also has another programming language called Fennel [1] which compiles a lisp like language to Lua. Both Fennel and Janet seem to orbit around Clojure ideas.... interestingly one of Fennel's main contributors [2] is also the author of Clojure's most popular build system, Leiningen. 1: https://fennel-lang.org/ 2: https://te…
Comment linking /186
on “Janet: a lightweight, expressive and modern Lisp”Submitted In which a compiler gets its wings as a story · 73 points
HN discussionSo many people make websites that basically look like they are from the 90's (though without all the animated GIFs haha), and use basic features without any strictly-modern stuff. These are just a few off the top of my head: https://cblgh.org/ https://technomancy.us/list https://alexschroeder.ch/ http://100r.co/site/about_us.html https://dataswamp.org/~solene/ https://rgz.ee/ https://www.bsdly.net/~peter/ https://co…
Comment linking /list
on “Make Front End Shit Again (2018)”Submitted In which a laptop defies the trends as a story · 56 points
HN discussionI am looking for a game framework that allows interactive programming like LISP for browser games. So far I have tried love2d, TIC-80, and defold. Fennel (Clojure like language for Lua) works with love2d and TIC-80, but I could not get emacs repl to connect to TIC-80. Also I couldn't get Fennel to work with defold. Maybe there's a way I haven't found yet, but for now the only way to achieve interactive programming i…
Comment linking /188
on “Defold: cross-platform game engine”Submitted In which we plot an escape from the quagmire of equality (Clojure and Emacs) as a story · 48 points
HN discussionI'm reminded of Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott[0], which is in part about just this sort of thing. Maps were one example presented in the book. And it does apply beyond just that too; I read this blog post a while back relating this tendency to social networks: https://technomancy.us/199 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State
Comment linking /199
on “Should this be a map or 500 maps?”Submitted Setting up a Clojure dev environment with Emacs and Slime as a story · 45 points
HN discussionActually, I'm not connected to the original 'technomancy'. I've never met the guy. I just liked the domain name (from reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon), and it's my personal domain name. I think 'technomancy' is on ' http://technomancy.us .
Comment linking /
on “A Google Suggest Venn Diagram Generator”Submitted Plotting an escape from the quagmire of equality in Emacs Lisp (2012) as a story · 34 points
HN discussionI highly recommend using Löve; the simplicity is very compelling. I wrote a bit about testing on my blog, but it's more about the architecture of how the user-input system meshes with the internal reprogrammability. There's a bit about fuzz testing though: https://technomancy.us/180 Maybe I'll follow it up with a more detailed post specifically about automated testing in Löve since it seems to be not well-understood.
Comment linking /180
on “Moving to GitLab: Yes, it's worth it”Submitted In which five different paths lead to methods as a story · 16 points
HN discussionWorth noting (for parenthesis-lovers!) the Fennel support added by Phil Hagelberg, as demoed e.g. in one of his Lisp Game Jam writeups here: https://technomancy.us/193
Comment linking /193
on “TIC-80 tiny computer”Submitted Three ways to write user-facing programs as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThis is a blog post by technomancy, the original author of Leiningen, exploring Racket as a new language: http://technomancy.us/175 EDIT: Wrong link. This one might be interesting as well so I've left it here: http://technomancy.us/169
Comment linking /169
on “Why Racket? Why Lisp? (2014)”Submitted In which the lessons of ZZ Top are applied to the marketplace as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThis is funny, cos I saw this stated somewhere on HN the other day, was totally amazed he'd done both, went and checked, and found out it was untrue - I think! Someone correct me please if I'm confused. Calvin Rose made Janet https://github.com/bakpakin and https://bakpakin.com/ Phil Hagelberg made Fennel https://git.sr.ht/~technomancy/fennel and https://technomancy.us/colophon
Comment linking /colophon
on “Janet for Mortals (2023)”Submitted In which there is no such thing as a functional programming language as a story · 7 points
HN discussionCheck out some of the alternate languages available for Android development: http://technomancy.us/134 If you're going to be moving away from Apple's monolingual nightmare you might as well take advantage of it. =)
Comment linking /134
on “Android Tries Harder”Submitted Less known (but useful) Clojure Libraries as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI don't know if it's systematic per se, but I wrote a comparison here: http://technomancy.us/169 My take is that the biggest difference is not in the language but the runtime. Nearly all the things that Racket lacks (except world-class GC and JIT compilation) can be added in after the fact due to its massive flexibility; Racket is a natural choice when you want a lisp but can't afford the memory or launch time overh…
Comment linking /169
on “Racket – Lisp beyond Clojure”Submitted In which static types are friends, not foes as a story · 6 points
HN discussionActually the week after that meetup I realized the process could be simplified dramatically: http://technomancy.us/149 Now once you have Leiningen and clojure-mode installed it's a single M-x clojure-jack-in to get started. Wish I had thought of that a week earlier! Could have saved us a lot of time at the meetup. (The way you posted still works fine, so if you've already got it set up there's no need to switch.)
Comment linking /149
on “Let's just use Emacs”Submitted A game written in 4 Lisp dialects as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAnd if you haven't checked out his pico-8 game he used fennel to write, you ought to. It's great! https://technomancy.us/190
Comment linking /190
on “Fennel – Lisp in Lua”Submitted In which projects may be more easily compiled and distributed as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
