r/programming

About r/programming

In its own words:

Computer Programming

The community was created on Feb 28, 2006, which makes it 20 years old. Since Oct 19, 2026, it has gained 2,560 subscribers (+0.04%). Among the 18 communities on our programming list it is the largest.

What sets r/programming apart

Its rhythm is strongly tied to time zones: the busiest hour (15:00 UTC) sees about 8.0× as many posts as the quietest (01:00 UTC).

Subscriber growth

Between Sep 19, 2026 and Oct 29, 2026, r/programming grew from 6,920,788 to 6,930,562 subscribers (+9.8K, +0.14%). That is about 244 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (8 so far), so it gets longer every week.

Top posts on r/programming this week

The most upvoted posts of the past seven days, in the order Reddit ranks them (collected Oct 30, 2026).

1. Just finished my multiplayer system in C and turns out we can support 50k players in a single server at 60hz simulation ticku/dechichi · Oct 25 · video
2. Why is it so expensive to send an email?u/wheatBread · Oct 26 · link
3. Broccoli2Shell: Brotli decoder RCE (CVE-2026-111497) in Node.js, Python and moreu/CircumspectCapybara · Oct 24 · link
4. Linux Kernel TCP Flaw With 9.8 CVSS Score Affects Ubuntu, Red Hat and Other Distributionsu/CircumspectCapybara · Oct 29 · link
5. eMudhra's Press Release on the CA Compromiseu/random8847 · Oct 23 · link
6. From 27 minutes to 4: Cutting CI build time by 85%u/AlexITC · Oct 26 · link
7. A faster way to compute signed 64-bit floor division by constantsu/benjoffe · Oct 28 · link
8. Python jettisons the native JIT, at least for nowu/nicholashairs · Oct 28 · link
9. Who lost my lap infant? My attempt to reverse engineer a decade-long airline bugu/julieunit · Oct 25 · link
10. HTMX creator on the history of REST and why he thinks we got it wrongu/creasta29 · Oct 25 · video

All-time top posts

The highest-ranked posts in the history of r/programming, from 2015 to 2023, ranked by Reddit.

1. Apollo dev posts backend code to Git to disprove Reddit’s claims of scrapping and inefficiencyu/GhostalMedia · Jun 9, 2023 · 44,747 points · 2,503 comments · link
2. There’s a reason that programmers always want to throw away old code and start over: they think the old code is a mess. They are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is b…u/the_phet · Apr 26, 2018 · 23,482 points · 1,069 comments · link
3. YouTube page load is 5x slower in Firefox and Edge than in Chrome because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome.u/malicious_turtle · Jul 24, 2018 · 22,215 points · 1,996 comments · link
4. Google wins trial against Oracle as jury finds Android is “fair use”u/hondaaccords · May 26, 2016 · 8,496 points · 1,307 comments · link
5. TIL there's a community called "dwitter" where people compose 140 character JavaScript programs that produce interesting visualsu/bemmu · Dec 26, 2017 · 19,260 points · 342 comments · link
6. Eye tracking software for sufferers of ALS/MND can cost tens of thousands of dollars, so I've spent 3.5 years of my spare time writing a free & open-source alternative - meet OptiKey (C#, Rx, WPF) (x…u/YeahIWroteOptiKey · Sep 10, 2015 · 8,662 points · 495 comments · link
7. Cool website that explains algorithms as if they are IKEA instruction manualsu/TheSpaceOfAdes · Mar 17, 2018 · 18,070 points · 249 comments · link
8. How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%u/simspelaaja · Feb 28, 2021 · link
9. Linus Torvalds: I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look at their CPU's, and actually admit that they have issues instead of writing PR blurbs that say that everything w…Jan 4, 2018 · 17,676 points · 1,637 comments · link
10. Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domainu/Balance- · Jun 10, 2018 · 17,504 points · 856 comments · link

What r/programming talks about

We read the titles of 161 recent posts (Oct 21–Oct 28), the words that come up most are “code”, “learn”, “browser”, “software” and “built”. Other frequent themes are server, faster, language, building, rust and system. Recurring phrases include “computer science”, “making simd”, “simd code” and “code scale”. By format, 83% are links and 17% are videos.

• code 14
• learn 7
• browser 6
• software 6
• built 6
• server 6
• faster 6
• language 5
• building 5
• rust 5
• system 5
• bug 4
• inside 4
• coding 4
• data 4
• emudhra 4
• computer 4
• science 4

Activity and best time to post

r/programming gets about 24 new posts a day. The public archive holds 661,592 posts and 8,442,829 comments in total, about 12.8 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Monday (37 posts) and the quietest was Saturday (18). Posting peaks around 15:00 UTC and is lowest around 01:00 UTC.

Rules of r/programming

The moderators of r/programming list 5 rules. In short:

1. /r/programming is not a support forum
2. Keep submissions on topic and of high quality
3. No surveys
4. No résumés/job listings
5. Project and product demos, spam

How to join

Open reddit.com/r/programming and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.

Frequently asked questions

Stats from public data (data updated Oct 29, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Oct 30, 2026; top posts from Reddit’s public feeds). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/programming.