Is there a particular reason the current HN source code isn't public? Is it security-related (people might find and exploit bugs), privacy/secrecy-related (YC-internal features that aren't publicly disclosed), or just tradition?
More privacy than security related, in the way you're using those terms. There are a lot of anti-abuse features, for example, that need to stay secret (yes we know, 'security by obscurity' etc., but nobody knows how to secure an internet forum from abuse, so we do what we know how to do). It would be a lot of work to disentangle those features from the backbone of the code. Actually pg used to use a clever 'hooks' design to keep those things separate, but inevitably they bleed into each other.
I always loved working in LISP, it was just so concise and really made you focus on code structure and hierachy. Need to get back into it again sometime.
Agreed, there's something special about LISPs I can't quite put my finger on. Which is kind of funny, because I've never used any lisp professionally and I don't think there are very many use cases I'd use one for.
Maybe SICP is just an unreasonably excellent book?
To me, the specialness of LISPs comes from the uniformity of the syntax (which in turn makes code easier to understand and reason about). This is probably highly subjective!
The current source of Hacker News is proprietary, because this forum is attached to a billion-dollar startup incubator and there's apparently real money to be had for wantrepreneurs trying to game the algorithm, and plenty of "business logic" they would have to remove and whatnot.
The current source of Arc Lisp is at https://arclanguage.org. It isn't open source in that there is any way to contribute or make pull requests that I'm aware of (I may simply be too much of a pleb to know,) rather now and then new versions simply descend from the Lisp gods and are posted. So it's more 'source available.'
The current public fork of Arc Lisp is Anarki at https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki. It has deviated a great deal from Arc and its version of the forum is not in any way in feature parity with Hacker News. But anyone is welcome to make a PR and contribute.
Arc is most definitely "open source", not "proprietary, source available". It's provided under the Artistic License (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_License). That license is GPL compatible, upholds the "spirit" of FOSS, and is OSI certified.
A bazaar development model is one that takes place in the open with contributions by strangers actively welcomed. A cathedral model involves development behind closed doors with periodic releases. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar)
Related old threads:
The earliest version of HN I can find; 166 LOC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=106398 - Jan 2008 (124 comments)
Others?
> The earliest version of HN I can find; 166 LOC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723767 - July 2009 (19 comments)
Unfortunately the original file (news.6sep06.arc) seems to be missing, anyone has a copy?
https://web.archive.org/web/20090728102853/https://www.ycomb...
1 reply →
Is there a particular reason the current HN source code isn't public? Is it security-related (people might find and exploit bugs), privacy/secrecy-related (YC-internal features that aren't publicly disclosed), or just tradition?
More privacy than security related, in the way you're using those terms. There are a lot of anti-abuse features, for example, that need to stay secret (yes we know, 'security by obscurity' etc., but nobody knows how to secure an internet forum from abuse, so we do what we know how to do). It would be a lot of work to disentangle those features from the backbone of the code. Actually pg used to use a clever 'hooks' design to keep those things separate, but inevitably they bleed into each other.
I always loved working in LISP, it was just so concise and really made you focus on code structure and hierachy. Need to get back into it again sometime.
Agreed, there's something special about LISPs I can't quite put my finger on. Which is kind of funny, because I've never used any lisp professionally and I don't think there are very many use cases I'd use one for.
Maybe SICP is just an unreasonably excellent book?
To me, the specialness of LISPs comes from the uniformity of the syntax (which in turn makes code easier to understand and reason about). This is probably highly subjective!
That said, SICP is unreasonably excellent :)
7 replies →
It's worth noting that this is a very old distribution of it; Arc now runs on Racket.
I don't know anything about Paul Graham, but I wish more sites were coded like this site.
It will probally take me forever, but one of my goals is to understand Lisp, and how this website works.
Not that this is the best way to learn Lisp, but this book by PG might help you understand Lisp: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html
thanks
Are there any more current versions of HN code available?
@dang is Hacker News still running on Lisp?
Not dang, but yes it is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483715
Thanks!
I doubt very much that this is the actual code, not being modified in 8 years is a huge stretch.
It has indeed been modified.
what about the current source?
The current source of Hacker News is proprietary, because this forum is attached to a billion-dollar startup incubator and there's apparently real money to be had for wantrepreneurs trying to game the algorithm, and plenty of "business logic" they would have to remove and whatnot.
The current source of Arc Lisp is at https://arclanguage.org. It isn't open source in that there is any way to contribute or make pull requests that I'm aware of (I may simply be too much of a pleb to know,) rather now and then new versions simply descend from the Lisp gods and are posted. So it's more 'source available.'
The current public fork of Arc Lisp is Anarki at https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki. It has deviated a great deal from Arc and its version of the forum is not in any way in feature parity with Hacker News. But anyone is welcome to make a PR and contribute.
The Arc language forum is at https://arclanguage.org/forum.
Arc is most definitely "open source", not "proprietary, source available". It's provided under the Artistic License (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_License). That license is GPL compatible, upholds the "spirit" of FOSS, and is OSI certified.
A bazaar development model is one that takes place in the open with contributions by strangers actively welcomed. A cathedral model involves development behind closed doors with periodic releases. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar)
1 reply →
Are you still using Arc these days?
What are the top three things where Anarki deviates from Arc?
1 reply →
Maybe this should read "Original Hacker News Source Code" as this doesn't look like it's been updated since 2015.
Yes, I've added that and added the date now- I assume it's from 2009 since that's the last announcement I could find.