alt Hacker NewsAsk HN: Favorite text heavy blogs that are a joy to read?
After ten years I’m working on a redesign of my personal tech blog. I want to look at some other blogs with good modern design. Of course searching for ‘well designed blogs’ or ‘webdesign 2026’ brings up endless marketing listicles. Even after wading through the crap, the advice is focused on advertising and product centric sites, not prose heavy sites with good typography.
So my question to you is: What are some of your favorite text heavy blogs that are a joy to read?
I don’t mean the content (though that helps too), but rather sites where the actual experience of reading is pleasant. Think: good fonts, sticky headers (or not), well formatted code snippets, and responsive images. Slide in navbars vs inline table of contents.
Thanks, - j
Comments
I like reading Julia Evans blog. Aside from the good writings, I think the typography and the paragraph width fits nicely.
I like the design of https://dbushell.com/blog/
Though mainly I just like the general 50s aesthetics of it, rather than specific UI elements.
Here is a decent collection of some text heavy personal sites. Not affiliated in any way: https://mnmm.xyz/
https://dfns.dyalog.com/n_sudoku.htm
Explanation of Sudoku in APL. Lots of information, absolutely no clutter. Entire page is nothing but text in a single precise sans-serif typewriter font, the same size and strength for everything: headings, explanation, code, and tables. Typewriter font includes mathematical symbols.
This one looks good to me. https://matklad.github.io/. Coincidentally the author has recently posted about CSS for blogs https://matklad.github.io/2026/06/04/css-unavoidable-bad-par....
I have my own blog, but I'm unhappy with its design as well; therefore I'm not sharing it. Nevertheless, I find particularly challenging two things: 1. Make tables readable from a smartphone. There are a few tricks which allow you to make a responsive table. However, those tricks implies that you use <ul> or <div> instead of <table> which defeats the point of having a table. 2. I had an article where I needed to put a tiny mind map. Eventually I put it as a picture, because the solutions to draw a mind map with JavaScript made the page as twice as heavy.
Language Log: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
The simple layout/theme does not get in the way of the reading.
surprised this isn't top
https://sites.gatech.edu/alexburgin/on-self-respect-by-joan-...
Dramatic sepia photograph contrasts with understated gray text on light gray background with lots of empty space.
I like the formatting and readability of https://nesbitt.io/2026/05/28/protestware-for-coding-agents.... though I wish it loaded faster.
https://www.datagubbe.se/short/
Header, body, trailer panels with three complementary background shades that soften the large black sans-serif typography.
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Lesswrong for both sidebars: the heading based TOC on the left, and the margin notes on the right: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bJ2haLkcGeLtTWaD5/welcome-to...
For interactive / code snippets Maxime Heckel: https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/the-study-of-shaders-wit...
Honorable mentions Maggie Applebaum https://maggieappleton.com/ai-enlightenment Marek Chotoborski https://zanlib.dev/blog/number-inputs-in-react/
Line width, sane fonts, avoiding clever shit unless very polished, gets you a long way.