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projects per year in "Ask HN: What are you working on?" year projects avg/month ---- -------- --------- 2008 123 10.2 2009 104
by stefap2 21d ago
projects per year in "Ask HN: What are you working on?"
year projects avg/month
---- -------- ---------
2008 123 10.2
2009 104 8.7
2010 666 55.5
2011 86 7.2
2012 46 3.8
2013 389 32.4
2014 146 12.2
2015 104 8.7
2016 471 39.2
2017 456 38.0
2018 242 20.2
2019 246 20.5
2020 882 73.5
2021 837 69.8
2022 363 30.2
2023 425 35.4
2024 2122 176.8
2025 6220 518.3
2026 6093 677.0 (Jan-Sep)
Top five topics per year (% of that year's projects, keyword-classified):
year #1 #2 #3 #4 #5
---- ------------- ------------- ------------- ------------- -------------
2008 Dev tools 9% Games 9% Video/gfx 7% Writing 7% Business 6%
2009 Dev tools 16% Science 11% Writing 8% Education 7% Business 7%
2010 Dev tools 8% Games 6% Video/gfx 6% Business 4% Writing 4%
2011 Dev tools 8% Games 8% Social 7% Business 7% Science 7%
2012 Business 13% Dev tools 7% Hardware 4% Video/gfx 4% Social 4%
2013 Dev tools 16% Video/gfx 10% Games 7% Writing 6% Education 6%
2014 Dev tools 12% Video/gfx 10% Writing 7% Hardware 6% Games 6%
2015 Games 11% Dev tools 10% Business 10% Hardware 8% Video/gfx 8%
2016 Dev tools 17% Video/gfx 11% Hardware 8% Business 6% Music 5%
2017 Dev tools 18% Video/gfx 10% Hardware 7% Games 6% Data 5%
2018 Dev tools 14% Video/gfx 8% Writing 6% Games 5% AI/LLM 4%
2019 Dev tools 17% Video/gfx 10% Games 9% Hardware 6% Business 5%
2020 Dev tools 14% Video/gfx 9% Games 8% Hardware 5% Writing 5%
2021 Dev tools 18% Video/gfx 10% Games 9% Hardware 7% Writing 6%
2022 Dev tools 21% Video/gfx 13% Music 9% Science 8% Games 7%
2023 Dev tools 14% Video/gfx 10% Games 9% Writing 8% AI/LLM 7%
2024 Dev tools 20% AI/LLM 17% Video/gfx 11% Games 9% Business 6%
2025 AI/LLM 27% Dev tools 21% Video/gfx 10% Games 9% Data 5%
2026 AI/LLM 33% Dev tools 22% Video/gfx 10% Games 10% Hardware 6%
- fl4tul4 21d agonowadays, with LLMs, everybody is calling themselves a developer doing any kind of project. Welcome to the future!
- buster 21d agoAs a developer myself i hear this so often. Yes, it's (probably) your job on the line as well, BUT everybody nowadays can be a developer. Maybe, don't call it developer. Everybody nowadays can built some software that fulfills some need (or just for fun). It's actually something good, isn't it? Would you mind, if you could suddenly, over night, be a carpenter, a watch maker or glassblower?
- keybored 21d agoI care a lot more about my gainful employment compared to the everyman being able to create their own... something.[1] That’s very selfish of me, AI Industry, and I’m sorry. > Would you mind, if you could suddenly, over night, be a carpenter, a watch maker or glassblower? Yes. If that came with the little-bitty stipulation of being tied to the “compute” property of these AI behemoths. Of course going beyond that it gets less problematic. Some carpenter-skilled exoskeleton is a lot less problematic than disembodied intelligences spamming our minds and each other. [1] What exactly? My mind is so saturated with AI tools being literally devtools. On top of devtools on top of devtools. Well we can finally get back to a semblance of the status quo ante Internetum with something like businesses being able to list all of their contact information on their own websites instead of “see our FB page”.
- mattbrewsbytes 20d agoMy view is if you joined two boards together: congrats, you're now a woodworker! Gating things by the level or complexity of what is accomplished isn't super helpful. I saw a lot of that with things like people that wrote HTML weren't "real coders". Glassblowing and watch making require specialized equipment I suppose so if you can get your hands on the gear and try it out, I feel like you can call yourself that. Maybe throw a "hobbyist" tag on it if you feel inclined.
- newAccount2025 20d agoI like this mindset and I’m going to steal this quote. Everyone is figuring things on their own skill journey with their hobbies and careers. Wherever you are, you can learn more and help people to come with you.
- scurnus 21d agoIt would be interesting to know if # daily users increased. Anyway there are so many projects, it is hard to decide what to projects read about, it is mostly already known figures who get the attention on their projects. Also we should force ourselves to give enough attention and time to projects we are interested in, without jumping to the next thing every 5 minutes.
- bluerooibos 21d agoHoly shit.
- sparkling 21d agoApart from the AI chain, who is benefiting from the explosion of vibecoded slop project? I can think of domain registrars and entry-level VPS hosters (non-Hyperscaler) Who else? Asking from a investment perspective.
- guywithahat 21d agoIf you use open source projects with any regularity, I'm certain you rely on AI-generated code, from projects who's primary contributors are AI
- xpct 21d agoCould we compare this to HN growth?
- stefap2 21d agoyear projects avg/month HN posts/day projects per 100k HN posts ---- -------- --------- ------------ -------------------------- 2008 123 10.2 880 38.2 2009 104 8.7 1,669 17.1 2010 666 55.5 2,826 64.6 2011 86 7.2 3,713 6.3 2012 46 3.8 4,315 2.9 2013 389 32.4 5,485 19.4 2014 146 12.2 5,009 8.0 2015 104 8.7 5,476 5.2 2016 471 39.2 6,758 19.0 2017 456 38.0 7,534 16.6 2018 242 20.2 7,546 8.8 2019 246 20.5 8,569 7.9 2020 882 73.5 10,036 24.0 2021 837 69.8 11,384 20.1 2022 363 30.2 12,187 8.2 2023 425 35.4 12,675 9.2 2024 2122 176.8 10,203 56.8 2025 6220 518.3 10,649 160.0 2026 6093 677.0 12,641 187.5 (Jan-Sep)
- xpct 20d agoWow, thank you for sharing! It's not quite clear to me why number of projects seem to be oscillating every few years.
- AlchemistCamp 20d ago2010 looks like a result of everyone flooding into the App Store.
- dabrez 16d agowhat happened in 2013 and in 2016/2017. 2020 and 2021 were covid obviously. I mean I would like to see them distributed throughout each individual month. That makes it interesting to me at least. Also what is cool is that you can see the covid impact on posts as well.
- david927 21d agoThanks for doing that! For more context on these numbers: when I started posting these, first, I wasn't consistent, and second, I was doing something that, to the algorithm, looked suspicious, so I think the posts had a negative weight. In 2024, HN reached out and it got more of an official blessing for me to run these, and we set an official day of the month (the second Sunday), which in turn made me more consistent.
- comboy 21d agoAwesome dataset. Things are changing. In Chinese-learning community I found that surprising amount of people are creating their own tools without any intent to publish them, it just became easier to create your own thing that to dig out the good stuff from tons of tools already available.
- brachkow 21d agoWhat's interesting (and kind of sad) here is that while AI drastically increased product count, more than 50% are now composed of dev tools and AI Some kind of golden shovels situation. I wish there were more games, personal apps, and open hardware – more fun stuff that became affordable due to AI
- xpct 21d agoIt's the same as before, dev tools ranking higher up. For better or worse, developers like to spend time on meta-development.
- sp1nningaway 21d agoBut there ARE more games, personal apps and open hardware! Games went from 38 in 2023 to 609 so far this year. A golden age for taking whatever sounds fun and making it happen. Yes, 50% of HNers appear to think AI metaprogramming is fun/important, but I'm excited that I can faff about with making little games and music apps and whatever else I can dream.
- song_synth 17d agoIf you'd like to enhance your music apps, Monic Theory can help you with that :) No AI, just art intelligence here :) https://monictheory.com/developer-api https://monictheory.com/developer-api
- chamomeal 21d agoIf you think about and use AI all the time, you’ll inevitably think of AI projects. Like that website indiehackers is mostly filled with ideas that market to other indiehackers
- partyficial 20d agohow did you get this data ? do you work at HN ?
- gregsadetsky 20d agoHN has an officially sanctioned API - https://github.com/hackernews/api https://github.com/hackernews/api - which makes all of this data available