📈 Show HN: Visualizing 18 Years of Hacker News Discourse

"A Google Trends-style experience for the Hacker News community, indexing nearly two decades of technical conversation."

I have developed Hacker News Trends, a tool designed to let users search and chart the popularity of any specific topic, software tool, or individual across 18 years of HN history.

🛠️ The Technical Foundation

The engine behind these visualizations is Upstash Redis Search. By indexing a massive dataset, the tool provides live date-histograms.

Data Scale: The index covers approximately $4.5 \times 10^7$ (45 million) total posts and comments.

🔍 How to Use the Tool

To explore the trends, you can follow these steps:

• Enter a search term in the + add term field.
• Drag across the timeline to select a specific date range.
• Click a specific month to filter the results.
• Sort the underlying stories by relevance, upvotes, discussion volume, or recency.
• Toggle the "only comments" view to strip out top-level stories.

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📊 The "Changing of the Guard": Popular Comparisons

The tool reveals fascinating "baton passes" in the tech industry. Below is a detailed breakdown of how different technologies have traded dominance over the years.

Category	The Contenders	The Narrative Arc
Cloud/Edge	Vercel vs. Cloudflare	Cloudflare dominated the CDN era; Vercel surged via Next.js; now they battle over full-stack hosting.
AI Labs	OpenAI vs. Anthropic	OpenAI held a massive lead from 2023, but Anthropic saw a sudden surge in 2026 to challenge them.
Hardware	AMD vs. Nvidia	AMD led 2017–20 (Ryzen/Zen); Nvidia took over 2020–23 via the AI/GPU boom.
JVM/Mobile	Scala $\rightarrow$ Swift $\rightarrow$ Kotlin	Scala peaked ~2011 $\rightarrow$ Swift took over iOS mid-decade $\rightarrow$ Kotlin won the Android era.
Frontend	Angular $\rightarrow$ Vue $\rightarrow$ Svelte	Angular led ~2013–14 $\rightarrow$ Vue rose 2016–19 $\rightarrow$ Svelte became the new favorite 2020–22.
Databases	MySQL vs. Postgres	MySQL was king ~2009–11, but Postgres steadily climbed to overtake it by 2017–20.
ML Frameworks	TensorFlow $\rightarrow$ PyTorch $\rightarrow$ JAX	TF started the gold rush (2015) $\rightarrow$ PyTorch won research (2019) $\rightarrow$ JAX is the current edge (2021+).
Bundlers	Webpack vs. Vite	Webpack owned the build process 2015–20; Vite disrupted and overtook it from 2022.
Crypto	Coinbase vs. Binance	Coinbase was the primary talking point 2013–21; Binance dominated headlines 2022–23.
Editors	Vim vs. Emacs vs. Zed	The eternal Vim/Emacs war was interrupted by a massive Zed spike in 2024–26.
Social	Mastodon vs. Bluesky	Mastodon spiked during the 2022 Twitter exodus; Bluesky became the primary destination 2024–25.
JS Runtimes	Deno vs. Bun	Deno was the "next big thing" 2020–22; Bun seized the spotlight from 2023 onward.
Web Standards	Flash vs. HTML5	Flash peaked 2010–11, then was systematically erased by HTML5 by 2014–15.
Containers	Docker vs. Kubernetes	Docker exploded in 2014–15; Kubernetes took over as the focus shifted to orchestration in 2016.
Vim Forks	Vim vs. Neovim	Vim led the 2010s; Neovim ignited a community migration 2021–23.
AI Shocks	ChatGPT vs. DeepSeek	ChatGPT created a "wall" in late 2022; DeepSeek created a "Sputnik moment" in Jan 2025.
JS Supersets	CoffeeScript vs. TypeScript	CoffeeScript's 2011–14 hype faded; TypeScript's 2019+ rise proved its lasting utility.
Image Gen	DALL-E $\rightarrow$ Stable Diffusion $\rightarrow$ Midjourney	DALL-E 2 (Spring '22) $\rightarrow$ Stable Diffusion (Summer '22) $\rightarrow$ Midjourney (2023).
CPU Arch	x86 vs. ARM	x86 dominated 2020–23; ARM surged via Apple Silicon and cloud chips into 2024–26.
Text Editors	Sublime $\rightarrow$ Atom $\rightarrow$ VS Code	Sublime (2012–14) $\rightarrow$ Atom (2014–15) $\rightarrow$ VS Code (2018–Present).
Video Calls	Skype $\rightarrow$ Zoom $\rightarrow$ MS Teams	Skype (2010s) $\rightarrow$ Zoom (March 2020 spike) $\rightarrow$ Teams (Remote work/Office wave).
CI/CD	Jenkins vs. GitHub Actions	Jenkins was the mid-2010s standard; GitHub Actions took over from 2021.
AI Coding	Cursor $\rightarrow$ Claude Code $\rightarrow$ Codex	Cursor (late 2024) $\rightarrow$ Claude Code (mid 2025) $\rightarrow$ Codex (early 2026).
Config Mgmt	Chef $\rightarrow$ Puppet $\rightarrow$ Ansible	Chef (~2011) $\rightarrow$ Puppet (2013) $\rightarrow$ Ansible's agentless model (2014–15).
Functional	Clojure $\rightarrow$ Haskell $\rightarrow$ Elixir	Clojure (2009–11) $\rightarrow$ Haskell (2012) $\rightarrow$ Elixir/Erlang revival (2016–18).
API Design	REST $\rightarrow$ gRPC / GraphQL	REST (2012–15) $\rightarrow$ gRPC for backend (2016) $\rightarrow$ GraphQL for clients (2017).
Web Servers	Apache $\rightarrow$ Nginx $\rightarrow$ Caddy	Apache (2010–12) $\rightarrow$ Nginx (2011–13) $\rightarrow$ Caddy's auto-HTTPS (2017–22).
JS MVC	Backbone $\rightarrow$ Ember $\rightarrow$ Angular	Backbone (2011) $\rightarrow$ Ember/Angular (2013–14), which eventually paved the way for React.
Hardware	Google Glass vs. Oculus	[Data continues into VR/AR trends...]

💻 Code Example: Query Logic

While the full source is on GitHub, the conceptual logic for retrieving a trend looks like this:

// Conceptual query for a topic trend
const trendData = await redis.ft.aggregate(`idx:hn`, 
  '$cursor', 
  {
    steps: [
      { '$query': { 'numerator': 'openai' } },
      { '$groupAggregate': { 
          'month': { '$histogram': { 'field': 'timestamp', 'interval': 'month' } }, 
          'count': { '$count': {} } 
      }}
    ]
  }
);

For more details, you can view the full source code on GitHub.