Breck Yunits
breckyunits.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Breck Yunits writes about programming, data analysis, information density, and his own tools such as Aftertext and Tree Notation.
What HN saysHN commenters like the site's dense design with little wasted whitespace, and some call his Tree Notation work an absorbing rabbit hole.
48HN people shared it
21linked it in comments
189stories submitted
1.9Kstory points
1 year agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Insist on Focus – Keith Rabois Describes Working at PayPal6 people · 8 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 2How old are the symbols on these keys?5 people · 8 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 3Show HN: Aftertext3 people · 101 points · first shared 2021 · 36 comments on HN
- 4Dreaming of a Data Checked Language3 people · 8 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
- 530k Hours (2019)3 people · 4 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 6The Great Bank Robbery3 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 7Twelve Tips to Master Programming Faster2 people · 61 points · first shared 2009 · 53 comments on HN
- 8Abort Bars: A Suggested Improvement to Progress Bars2 people · 33 points · first shared 2024 · 4 comments on HN
- 9With Computers: Don't Repeat Yourself. With People: Do Repeat Yourself2 people · 27 points · first shared 2010 · 13 comments on HN
- 10When forced to wait, wait2 people · 21 points · first shared 2010 · 3 comments on HN
- 11Part Assholes Are Awesome2 people · 12 points · first shared 2024 · 6 comments on HN
- 12Analyzing the Hacker News Users’ Join Dates, Karma, and Profiles2 people · 10 points · first shared 2008 · 2 comments on HN
- 13An Angel Investor's Data2 people · 10 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 14Why 10k Hours? (2013)2 people · 8 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 15The Journey of the Ketones Naked Bodies in Las Vegas2 people · 5 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
breck · 2024-07-27
I love information density!
I collect old newspapers and back then info density was way higher (for an _amazing_ coffee table book, google "nytimes complete front pages"). So much critical info above the fold.
I think high information density === high intelligence. Getting sort priorities right is very valuable and important.
The past few years the web seemed to be going the other way. Good to see people still rowing in the other direction.
Other examples:
I designed my blog to allow one to zoom in/zoom out to see ~20 years of posts at once (https://breckyunits.com/).
I've got some stuff coming out to promote (and make it easier to build) highly information dense cheat sheets (I'm trying to get the name "Leet Sheet" to catch on - https://pldb.io/blog/leetSheets.html)
gardenfelder · 2022-10-03
I feel like kicking this story up a notch: Visit his TreeNotation website, best illustrated at [1] and then back up to his root Github repo [2].I'm finding this stuff a serious time sink :-)
[1] https://breckyunits.com/
[2] https://github.com/breck7
a_c · 2024-09-25
Agree with many comments here that we have been programming this way all along and called that microprogram functions. Tangentially, I like the design of the blog https://breckyunits.com/ quite a lot. No wasted white spaces.
xiaofei_ · 2024-09-15
I used the URL of your blog post (https://breckyunits.com/30000hours.html) and ran it through a tool with the query "What is it about?" It generated a summary of your article, which you can check out here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WGqg2yg-waFlUcJZ6nZBSS9eViDjE9LX/view… Hope you find it useful!
By the way, great blog content!
gwern · 2023-02-22
Reminds me a bit of https://breckyunits.com/ but with more retro chrome for the tiled layout of text.
cjlm · 2022-04-06
https://cjlm.ca – currently sporting a newspaper-style layout inspired by http://www.breckyunits.com/
flavio81 · 2017-08-03
>I'm a Lisper (and Pythoner) (...) It boggles my mind that Lispers haven't taken that problem seriously. I have taken it very seriously and have been working on it for years.
I just started publishing my results.
http://breckyunits.com/the-flaw-in-lisp.html
Honestly, there is no flaw in the parentheses. You just need to write more Lisp.
The parentheses are one of the best things in Lisp.
toppy · 2016-11-22
throw10920 · 2021-12-16
Very insightful. I've been thinking about this myself.
One of the possibilities is "just legacy code, bad habits, and bandwagoning", but that's a bit of a cop-out.
Another is "Unix utilities have a much better API to the filesystem and invoking other programs than most languages available today" - which is a (somewhat more-) concrete issue that we can address in other languages!
A third possibility is that the Unix tools transition very well from interactive use to batch use in a larger program - again, something that we can work on improving in other languages. Emacs seems to also do this - functions that are usable in both interactive mode (either invoking with M-x or through a keybinding) and as pieces in larger scripts/functions are pervasive. Breck Yunits calls these "user methods"[1] and I think that it's a good idea for a great pattern.
[1] https://breckyunits.com/user-methods.html
dejj · 2025-06-01
Reminds me of Aftertext, which uses backward references to apply markup to earlier parts of the data.
Think about how this could be done recursively, and how scoping could work to avoid spaghetti markup.
Aftertext: https://breckyunits.com/aftertext.html
elviejo · 2024-09-05
There have been 3 videos to develop this DSL.
1st the original idea: https://breckyunits.com/oneTextarea.html
Then an implementation https://www.youtube.com/live/97T0TaYTYrw?si=_3MxIHaQ0HVWwMS4
And the latest email of the form: https://www.youtube.com/live/_3jrpATE1cY?si=EiCZV89PhHB-aU0c
vedranm · 2024-06-24
> - Helpful 404s. If you mistype a url, the 404 page compares it to working urls and shows you the closest match. All done using clientside JS (no web server needed). For example: https://breckyunits.com/pcr.html
Very neat! Many other are cool too.
jldugger · 2024-04-08
Not trying to kick anyone when they're down but it's massively important context to the dataset and to the writing. To quote the sleep metric database, that post was written on a 5.5 hour sleep day, in a long running streak of them. That's pretty textbook mania phase IMO. As supporting evidence, while it may have been an attempt at self deprecating humor, it also fits in the author's timeline listed elsewhere[1].
[1]: https://breckyunits.com/a-manic-startup.html
yesenadam · 2022-12-15
"Don't talk about what you will do, talk about what you have done"
http://www.breckyunits.com/dont-talk-about-what-you-will-do-talk-about…
ivan_ah · 2021-11-09
Does anyone know how to get the narrow column at the center of the screen in full screen mode pictured in the article using vim settings? see https://breckyunits.com/writeThin.png
I tried :set textwidth=<tw>, but that gives left aligned so not quite the same...
gus_massa · 2020-12-09
You should add a link in the image to https://breckyunits.com/files/keyboard/ (It is linked in the text, but it is not obvious enough.)
majewsky · 2017-06-21
> http://breckyunits.com/files/ohayo.png
I have no idea what I'm looking at. This could be a code editor, a debugger, a plain code listing. No. Idea.
jcromartie · 2011-01-20
I'm pretty sure I saw this on HN before, but...
http://breckyunits.com/when_forced_to_wait_wait
TheSOB88 · 2010-04-02
Don't repeat yourself to computers. DO repeat yourself to people. http://breckyunits.com/with_computers_dont_repeat_yourself_with_people…
Terretta · 2024-06-27
> Regardless if you specialize in React, Rails, Django, Next, Java, C#, or ObjectiveC, you probably use templates to start new projects.
Java, C#, or ObjectiveC devs are unlikely to want their first command at the shell to start with `npm`, or the software supply chain fiasco npm drags in.
That said, to jump in, here's a better starting point than this HN post link:
- Overview: https://scroll.pub/
- Not helpful: https://notation.scroll.pub/
- More helpful: https://scroll.pub/tutorial.html
- Source: https://github.com/breck7/scroll
If you want more, you can sponsor breckyunits lab for $499,999 a year:
https://breckyunits.com/lab.html
senorqa · 2022-07-31
RSS feeds for 5 out of the Top Hits list
https://breckyunits.com/feed.xml
https://www.gwern.net/feed.rss
https://www.righto.com/rss.xml
https://blog.jgc.org/rss.xml
https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/rss/