Susam Pal
Susam Pal is a programmer who writes about Lisp, Vim, and tiny programming languages, and has kept his website for over two decades.
What HN says
HN links his Lisp-in-Vim guide, which a commenter says helped them start learning Lisp, and his small drawing languages.
Stats for nerds
102HN people shared it
403linked in comments
8.4Kstory points
Jun 2026last shared
Top posts on HN
- 1Sinkholed4 people · 620 points · first shared 2019 · 130 comments on HN
- 2Guess my RGB3 people · 618 points · first shared 2024 · 144 comments on HN
- 3Hacker News Hug of Deaf1 person · 457 points · first shared 2025 · 110 comments on HN
- 4Simplicity of IRC1 person · 364 points · first shared 2022 · 244 comments on HN
- 5The indieweb doesn't need to “take off”1 person · 309 points · first shared 2025 · 166 comments on HN
- 6I fed 24 years of my blog posts to a Markov model2 people · 306 points · first shared 2025 · 123 comments on HN
- 7Prime Number Grid3 people · 296 points · first shared 2025 · 96 comments on HN
- 8Solving Fizz Buzz with Cosines3 people · 218 points · first shared 2025 · 65 comments on HN
- 9Elliptical Python Programming2 people · 188 points · first shared 2025 · 21 comments on HN
- 10Comfort of Bloated Web1 person · 158 points · first shared 2022 · 35 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
- susamAug 2019
If you like writing Python code, I recommend https://github.com/sunainapai/makesite (makesite.py). As the README says, it is a simple, lightweight, and magic-free static blog generator. The entire static blog generator code is in a single file named makesite.py.
Add your content to the `content` directory. Then run `python3 makesite.py` to generate the static blog. It writes the generated blog to the `_site` directory. Finally copy this directory to wherever you want to serve your blog from, e.g., GitHub repo with GitHub pages enabled, virtual private server, cloud storage, etc.
It works pretty well out of the box and it is highly customizable too because doing so involves just modifying the existing Python code or writing your own Python code.
Disclaimer: This project has been written by my wife. I use it myself to render my static blog at https://susam.in/.
- yoriFeb 2020
Here's a good one: https://susam.in/
Stumbled on this when his domain was hijacked accidentally due to an anti-botnet operation and his post about it came on HN (check the "Sinkholed" post). Since then I've subscribed to his blog, read the older posts and enjoyed the newer posts too.
He mostly posts about technology and mathematics. The reason why I got hooked to this blog is that they are mostly about offbeat topics that I wouldn't normally come across on my own. So there is something new to learn from every post. And they are very well written with great attention to detail.
- carloswilsonMar 2020
While this product of additive inverses property does follow from the field axioms, there is a short discussion in the blog comments at https://susam.in/blog/product-of-negatives/comments/ which shows that this property holds true for all rings too.
So it is not just numbers for which this property holds true but for all elements of fields and rings too. Quite simply, (-a)(-b) = (a)(b) in all rings where (-a) and (-b) are the additive inverses of a and b respectively.
- nottwoSep 2025
This is fun!
I was going to try to draw a circle but was missing sin/sqrt. Then I thought of using a lookup table but got stumped.
Do you have any pointers for drawing a circle?
I'm looking at demo #4 (https://susam.net/fxyt.html#XYpTN1srN255pTN1sqD) to see where the circular shapes are coming from.
Have you seen Forth Haiku? https://forthsalon.appspot.com/
- ryan-duveMar 2024
It's been a week so I can't edit my other response to this, but yes, Slimv was what I was missing. I read your second link and followed the instructions and am now able to actually learn this language. Thank you for sharing.
For anyone else that knows Vim but can't seem to get a good CL environment going, read https://susam.net/lisp-in-vim.html
- furyofantaresOct 2023
To get to the bottom left: [RRR][[[[[[F]F]F]F]F]F]F[RRR][[[[[[F]F]F]F]F]F]FF
https://susam.net/cfr.html#BR3EB6FEFEFEFEFEFEFBR3EB6FEFEFEFEFEFEF2
Prepend a C to get there without drawing lines on the way. Suffix with [RRRRRR]C to rotate upwards and get a visible color again.
Whenever I'm lost I paste [[[[CFCF]]]] at the end to find my cursor.