from Hacker News

Show HN: Hacker News Classics

by jsomers on 2/23/18, 12:11 AM with 107 comments

  • by jsomers on 2/23/18, 12:11 AM

    Occasionally you see articles on HN with a date in the title, like “(1998)” — and over the years I’ve noticed that these tend to be some of the best posts.

    It makes sense: on a site devoted to news, an article posted so long after it was published has to be especially good.

    So I hacked together this page, which links to every HN post with a date in its title earning more than 40 votes. It’s sorted in chronological order to encourage wandering.

  • by zaroth on 2/23/18, 1:45 AM

    So in case I’m not spending enough time on the front page of this HN, good to know there’s a nearly infinite depth to plumb.

    And now I’m reading Arnold Bennett’s ‘How to Live on 24 Hours a Day’ originally published in 1908. Good to know tongue-in-cheek self-help books will never go out of style!

    [1] - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2274/2274-h/2274-h.htm

  • by dang on 2/23/18, 12:28 AM

    You can also to go https://news.ycombinator.com/front to bounce around how HN's front page looked on past days, like https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-06-20.

    Or click on the date in an account's profile to see what HN looked like on its birthday.

  • by aswerty on 2/23/18, 7:57 AM

    With regards to Classics, the "You're probably using the wrong dictionary" blog post at http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary was probably the most interesting pieces I've read on HN.

  • by baddox on 2/23/18, 4:25 AM

    This is very cool! Based on the title “HN Classics,” I thought it might be an implementation of another idea I’ve had. I had this idea to search for stand-out articles that get reposted every so often and always get a lot of good attention and discussion: so-called classics of HN.

    I think that data could be very interesting, and would also serve as a sort of “hall of fame” of articles the HN community loves (moreso than just a list of the most upvoted articles of all time).

    Of course, you could also figure out the optimal duration between successive posts, and figure out when to repost yourself, if anyone wants a karma-grab. ;)

  • by gus_massa on 2/23/18, 12:27 AM

    I'd prefer to sort them by points. By age is interesting, by the way.

    Do you do some deduplication. Some classics are resubmitted a few times successfully. Perhaps add a third sort criteria, that is sorted by the number of big reposts.

  • by CGamesPlay on 2/23/18, 12:46 AM

    Since the first post is 1900 and it appears to be sorted by date, I wanted to verify: there were no posts from the 1800s worth showing?

  • by pmoriarty on 2/23/18, 12:35 AM

    Any way this could be done without requiring javascript?

    For security, ad-blocking, and privacy reasons I have javascript blocked in my browser, and really don't like to turn it on except for sites like my bank.

  • by nugi on 2/23/18, 12:27 AM

    Wow, this is great.

    Were there no pre 1900 refrences or is that just were you chose to start?

  • by swyx on 2/23/18, 1:51 AM

    ah i was thinking of making something like this but never did anything. i would have called it Hacker Olds :)

    well done!

  • by CookieMon on 2/23/18, 3:28 AM

    It may need some broken link tools. I clicked on the 4th link and the site no longer exists, Wayback Machine has it though - https://web.archive.org/web/20170606131659/http://www.lhup.e...

    Perhaps Hacker Classics could automatically ensure all remaining live links get archived?

  • by zestyping on 2/23/18, 12:27 PM

    There's something odd about the file checked in to Github; it's cut off on line 50:

    https://github.com/jsomers/hacker-classics/blob/master/index...

  • by jerkstate on 2/23/18, 3:54 AM

    Suggested title: Hacker Olds

  • by mosselman on 2/23/18, 8:10 AM

    Interesting how both now and 'then' Tesla is still in the top stories.

  • by bringtheaction on 2/23/18, 1:51 AM

    This is pretty nice. I also think a browse by year feature would be neat. By that I mean in the same fashion as OP, so I could for example look at posts that had (2011) in the title by going to 2011, etc.

  • by jurnalanas on 2/23/18, 2:32 AM

    wow, this is really interesting..

    and I just reliazed one of the reason why classic writings are special -- especially for another writing material purpose is because it has passed the the test of time..

  • by murukesh_s on 2/23/18, 7:52 AM

    Thanks for this. Can't upvote this enough. Still going through lots of gems that I would never have read without this. p.s thanks for ruining lot of my work hours. but thanks!

  • by lamby on 2/23/18, 9:57 AM

    Anyone fancy putting all of these into a Kindle/PDF? :)

  • by hownottowrite on 2/23/18, 1:44 PM

    I'm not sure how I feel about having three items on this list (including the current #1). I might need to take my buggy out for a long trot to contemplate.

  • by boffinism on 2/23/18, 9:20 AM

    Hmmm... lovely idea, but in practice what I'm getting is a bunch of 404s. The internet is a library with a bunch of books missing...

  • by bordercases on 2/23/18, 5:40 AM

    Interesting how as we approach from 1903 to 2010 we ultimately go from more general and deep to more specialized and disconnected.

  • by lostlogin on 2/23/18, 7:25 PM

    There are some great comment threads there that had me itching to chime in, 5 years too late. What an excellent project.

  • by zestyping on 2/23/18, 12:27 PM

    Why the cutoff at 2012? (line 71 of index.html)

    > if (data.hasOwnProperty(yr) && parseInt(yr) < 2012)

  • by hvd on 2/23/18, 4:29 AM

    this is fantastic. Great snapshot of the past. Thank you jsomers for sharing this.

  • by obbobo on 2/25/18, 3:04 PM

    It's fascinating to dig into HN literature from 1900!

  • by lozzo on 2/26/18, 9:46 AM

    this is really brilliant. But is there a reason you sort the list from the oldest to the newest ? I think it would make sense to have it the other way around.

    best

  • by tambourine_man on 2/23/18, 11:12 AM

    Nice.

    You could say they are… evergreen (title bar color)

  • by bartl on 2/23/18, 12:13 PM

    Second link is dead. So is the fourth.

  • by tmaly on 2/23/18, 1:34 PM

    Very cool! how will you maintain it?

  • by mud_dauber on 2/23/18, 5:30 PM

    This is glorious. Thank you.

  • by scotty79 on 2/23/18, 4:08 AM

    Paywall on article from 1930. That's a sad state of affairs.

  • by vamshidhar490 on 2/23/18, 7:55 AM

    hacker news is awsome

  • by katee on 2/23/18, 3:01 AM

    test

  • by kristofferR on 2/23/18, 4:18 AM

    I found this page of undocumented HN tips [1], finds Hacker News Classic [2] and the top post there was Hacker News Classics [3].

    [1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

    [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/classic

    [3] http://jsomers.net/hn/

    Quite a cool coincidence!

  • by gt_ on 2/23/18, 4:57 AM

    Nice to see E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops there near the top of the list when clicking the link. Thanks for sharing.