📈 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.

📊 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.