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Top Checklists on HN

259 points by gawin 8y ago

iamkoby 8y ago
This is great! So many great posts!!
- gawin 8y ago
  Yeah, I was quite surprised myself. Thought it was worth bookmarking and sharing ;)
mjfl 8y ago
These are so so so useful for self teaching.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Svip 8y ago
Why does hn.algolia.com require JavaScript to work? Seems somewhat counter to the philosophy of HN's web design.
- karterk 8y ago
  That's because HN search is hosted by Algolia who encourage searching directly from JS (client side) since it's faster (one less hop to an intermediate HN server).
- gawin 8y ago
  Algolia and HackterNews (Y Combinator) are two different parties. Algolia implemented the HackerNews API (which is based on Firebase). Agolia uses their JavaScript library to enhance the user experience (for near instant search results).
  - chrismorgan 8y ago
    General commentary based on your use of the words “enhance” and “near instant”: Especially in places of higher latency (e.g. Australia), using JavaScript for things like this does not enhance the user experience, but rather increases the delay, because additional round trips are required, especially when it’s over TLS on a different host as in this case. On a good connection at these latencies (~300ms), these near instant search results you describe take around four seconds to load, rather than under a second and a half as it would be if it just served the final DOM directly—or 100ms if it could serve the whole thing from an edge location. (Having to execute half a megabyte of JavaScript for a search page before it will actually do the search seems fairly absurd too.) Subsequent searches without a page reload will also often take 2–3 seconds due to the connection having been closed and the DNS TTL being only one minute, so it’s got to resolve that again, open a new TLS connection, et cetera. I really wish people would actively avoid the fancy JavaScript SPA approach. (And I work on such an SPA.) There’s a place for them, but this is not a good demo of that place.
    - crispyporkbites 8y ago
      I think a JS SPA is a good fit for this. A common search use case is trying to find something obscure, which usually takes a few different searches. Once you've loaded up the SPA once (ie. your 4 second delay), you are able to do multiple searches quite rapidly as the subsequent post requests are tiny (3kb out 16kb in), new DNS resolution / TLS connections won't be required for at least a few minutes. So if I'm doing more than one search, which I would guess is the way most people use it, then the current implementation will be much, much faster than doing a full page reload on every search.
      - jasode 8y ago
        >Once you've loaded up the SPA once (ie. your 4 second delay), you are able to do multiple searches quite rapidly as the subsequent post requests are tiny I don't think parent poster is talking about initial page load. Instead, the search page's javascript intercepts every keydown event so you would suffer 4 second round-trip delay for every keystroke. (You can go see this in browser's developer tools by setting a breakpoint on the keydown event.) Instead of this: [4 seconds] page load done, type "Ruby" It's this: R [4 seconds] u [4 seconds] b [4 seconds] y [4 seconds] More examples of this keydown latency frustration are retail websites like homedepot.com and lowes.com. When you're at home on a fast fiber optic connection, the keydown events work fine. (Customers generally like the "autocomplete" feature that the keydown javascript code enables.) However, when I'm at the store with a mobile phone on a slow 3G connection, each keydown takes 5 seconds and it makes it impossible to use the website.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
fasteo 8y ago
At the time of this writing, this post (89 points) is already in the second page of its "own" list.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  It's now on the first page for me, very meta. Does anyone here use checklists in their day to day? My work tends to shift daily/weekly/monthly, I'm not usually doing similar things most days.
ourmandave 8y ago
Are these checklists updated? The "Web Developer Checklist" was 5 years ago. And the "quick website launch checklist" was 7 years.
- codingdave 8y ago
  No, this is just a search for old posts with the word 'checklist' in it. The actual quality and timeliness of any given list is something you'll need to judge for yourself.
superasn 8y ago
This is a great way to find many great posts and learn from HN: "things i learned" https://hn.algolia.com/?query=things%20i%20learned&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=things%20i%20learned&sort=byPo... "wish someone told" https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wish%20someone%20told&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wish%20someone%20told&sort=byP... "how did you" https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20did%20you&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20did%20you&sort=byPopular... I'm sure there are many others like this too!
- mygo 8y ago
  works for comments too, although it’s pretty much hunting for long-tail keywords “pm me” “opportunity” “pent up demand” “I’d pay” “I miss” etc

259 points by gawin 8y ago

iamkoby 8y ago

This is great! So many great posts!!

gawin 8y ago
Yeah, I was quite surprised myself. Thought it was worth bookmarking and sharing ;)

mjfl 8y ago

These are so so so useful for self teaching.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Svip 8y ago

Why does hn.algolia.com require JavaScript to work? Seems somewhat counter to the philosophy of HN's web design.

karterk 8y ago
That's because HN search is hosted by Algolia who encourage searching directly from JS (client side) since it's faster (one less hop to an intermediate HN server).
gawin 8y ago
Algolia and HackterNews (Y Combinator) are two different parties. Algolia implemented the HackerNews API (which is based on Firebase). Agolia uses their JavaScript library to enhance the user experience (for near instant search results).
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  General commentary based on your use of the words “enhance” and “near instant”: Especially in places of higher latency (e.g. Australia), using JavaScript for things like this does not enhance the user experience, but rather increases the delay, because additional round trips are required, especially when it’s over TLS on a different host as in this case. On a good connection at these latencies (~300ms), these near instant search results you describe take around four seconds to load, rather than under a second and a half as it would be if it just served the final DOM directly—or 100ms if it could serve the whole thing from an edge location. (Having to execute half a megabyte of JavaScript for a search page before it will actually do the search seems fairly absurd too.) Subsequent searches without a page reload will also often take 2–3 seconds due to the connection having been closed and the DNS TTL being only one minute, so it’s got to resolve that again, open a new TLS connection, et cetera. I really wish people would actively avoid the fancy JavaScript SPA approach. (And I work on such an SPA.) There’s a place for them, but this is not a good demo of that place.
  - crispyporkbites 8y ago
    I think a JS SPA is a good fit for this. A common search use case is trying to find something obscure, which usually takes a few different searches. Once you've loaded up the SPA once (ie. your 4 second delay), you are able to do multiple searches quite rapidly as the subsequent post requests are tiny (3kb out 16kb in), new DNS resolution / TLS connections won't be required for at least a few minutes. So if I'm doing more than one search, which I would guess is the way most people use it, then the current implementation will be much, much faster than doing a full page reload on every search.
    - jasode 8y ago
      >Once you've loaded up the SPA once (ie. your 4 second delay), you are able to do multiple searches quite rapidly as the subsequent post requests are tiny I don't think parent poster is talking about initial page load. Instead, the search page's javascript intercepts every keydown event so you would suffer 4 second round-trip delay for every keystroke. (You can go see this in browser's developer tools by setting a breakpoint on the keydown event.) Instead of this: [4 seconds] page load done, type "Ruby" It's this: R [4 seconds] u [4 seconds] b [4 seconds] y [4 seconds] More examples of this keydown latency frustration are retail websites like homedepot.com and lowes.com. When you're at home on a fast fiber optic connection, the keydown events work fine. (Customers generally like the "autocomplete" feature that the keydown javascript code enables.) However, when I'm at the store with a mobile phone on a slow 3G connection, each keydown takes 5 seconds and it makes it impossible to use the website.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

fasteo 8y ago

At the time of this writing, this post (89 points) is already in the second page of its "own" list.

WhompingWindows 8y ago
It's now on the first page for me, very meta. Does anyone here use checklists in their day to day? My work tends to shift daily/weekly/monthly, I'm not usually doing similar things most days.

ourmandave 8y ago

Are these checklists updated? The "Web Developer Checklist" was 5 years ago. And the "quick website launch checklist" was 7 years.

codingdave 8y ago
No, this is just a search for old posts with the word 'checklist' in it. The actual quality and timeliness of any given list is something you'll need to judge for yourself.

superasn 8y ago

This is a great way to find many great posts and learn from HN: "things i learned" https://hn.algolia.com/?query=things%20i%20learned&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=things%20i%20learned&sort=byPo... "wish someone told" https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wish%20someone%20told&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wish%20someone%20told&sort=byP... "how did you" https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20did%20you&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=how%20did%20you&sort=byPopular... I'm sure there are many others like this too!

mygo 8y ago
works for comments too, although it’s pretty much hunting for long-tail keywords “pm me” “opportunity” “pent up demand” “I’d pay” “I miss” etc