{"slug": "acorn", "name": "Acorn", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 3.188, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-11-02", "latest": "2026-10-28", "why": "For casual users and likely some pro users, there\u2019s still Pixelmator Pro and Acorn.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 2, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "For casual users and likely some pro users, there\u2019s still Pixelmator Pro and Acorn.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "flyingmeat.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Acorn"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 804346642, "item_id": 50271665, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271665", "by": "chrisvenum", "date": "2026-10-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "They also have radicle/acorn bring pretty much a Laravel setup with WP bolted on.", "excerpt": "For those of you who have no choice but to use WordPress (marketing team/customer requirements), I strongly recommend you look at the roots.io stack. It allows you to bring modern PHP development practices and sanity to WP while keeping the CMS the same for end users. Bedrock introduces the ability to manage WP core and plugins using PHPs composer package manager meaning that plugins are tracked in git. Sage is their", "context": "", "use_case": "Laravel-style WordPress", "switched_from": "", "story": "I've used WordPress for 20 years, and I've stopped recommending it"}, {"id": 775158560, "item_id": 48447410, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447410", "by": "rgovostes", "date": "2026-06-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the excellent macOS image editor Acorn", "excerpt": "Related: Gus Mueller (of the excellent macOS image editor Acorn) has a parametric pizza dough calculator: https://maybepizza.com/calc/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 746973185, "item_id": 46685824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46685824", "by": "rgovostes", "date": "2026-01-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "always purchase the latest release of Acorn", "excerpt": "I have a few app subscriptions that are under $5/yr, like Parcel, and always purchase the latest release of Acorn for around $20/yr. I use those apps frequently and hope those rates are supporting the independent developers who make them. I would gladly pay more for tools I use to make a living. A few other apps that are only occasionally used support short-term paid activations, like Flighty and Oceanic+. I think th", "context": "", "use_case": "image editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results"}, {"id": 732744225, "item_id": 45796514, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796514", "by": "blub", "date": "2025-11-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For casual users and likely some pro users, there\u2019s still Pixelmator Pro and Acorn.", "excerpt": "For casual users and likely some pro users, there\u2019s still Pixelmator Pro and Acorn. I used to use Photoshop CS for web design many years ago and they\u2019re good enough for that. This Canva app\u2019s so dumb, even their log-in doesn\u2019t work. I wanted to log in once and then keep it offline, in the hope that they would keep their promise and allow long offline use. If it\u2019s so buggy it will probably accidentally log itself out ", "context": "", "use_case": "image editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Affinity enshittification: How Canva's \"Four Pledges\" aged like milk"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["image editing", "laravel-style wordpress", "javascript parsing"], "compared": [], "makers": [{"id": 751108656, "item_id": 46944291, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46944291", "by": "onel", "date": "2026-02-09", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A straightforward and simple AI agent framework.", "excerpt": "https://github.com/askmanu/acorn A straightforward and simple AI agent framework. It puts a lot of emphasis on the loop and the steps in that loop. You can change in real time the model, the temperature, the tools, the history. You're also able to spin-off work on a branch and then add the result of that work on the main branch. Still early but developing very fast.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)"}, {"id": 732661363, "item_id": 45791335, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45791335", "by": "lacker", "date": "2025-11-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm working on a dependent type system at the moment for a new theorem prover - Acorn", "excerpt": "Dependent types are very useful for some things. For example, I wish Python had the ability to express \"a 10 x 5 matrix of float32s\" as a type, and typecheck that. The Curry-Howard correspondence, using dependent type system to have \"proofs\" be equivalent to \"types\", is powerful, but it can be really confusing. From a human point of view, there is a huge difference between \"Your proof is wrong\" and \"You wrote a state", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't you use dependent types?"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266880", "title": "I've used WordPress for 20 years, and I've stopped recommending it", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408854", "title": "item 48408854", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46937696", "title": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46680974", "title": "Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46076642", "title": "SQLite as an Application File Format", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45935342", "title": "Designing a Language (2017)", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 804346642, "item_id": 50271665, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271665", "by": "chrisvenum", "date": "2026-10-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "They also have radicle/acorn bring pretty much a Laravel setup with WP bolted on.", "excerpt": "For those of you who have no choice but to use WordPress (marketing team/customer requirements), I strongly recommend you look at the roots.io stack. It allows you to bring modern PHP development practices and sanity to WP while keeping the CMS the same for end users. Bedrock introduces the ability to manage WP core and plugins using PHPs composer package manager meaning that plugins are tracked in git. Sage is their", "context": "", "use_case": "Laravel-style WordPress", "switched_from": "", "story": "I've used WordPress for 20 years, and I've stopped recommending it"}, {"id": 775158560, "item_id": 48447410, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447410", "by": "rgovostes", "date": "2026-06-08", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the excellent macOS image editor Acorn", "excerpt": "Related: Gus Mueller (of the excellent macOS image editor Acorn) has a parametric pizza dough calculator: https://maybepizza.com/calc/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 746973185, "item_id": 46685824, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46685824", "by": "rgovostes", "date": "2026-01-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "always purchase the latest release of Acorn", "excerpt": "I have a few app subscriptions that are under $5/yr, like Parcel, and always purchase the latest release of Acorn for around $20/yr. I use those apps frequently and hope those rates are supporting the independent developers who make them. I would gladly pay more for tools I use to make a living. A few other apps that are only occasionally used support short-term paid activations, like Flighty and Oceanic+. I think th", "context": "", "use_case": "image editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results"}, {"id": 737292864, "item_id": 46080804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080804", "by": "ejstembler", "date": "2025-11-28", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The Acorn macOS app uses SQLite in a similar way", "excerpt": "The Acorn macOS app uses SQLite in a similar way: https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/docs/technotes/ACTN002.html", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SQLite as an Application File Format"}, {"id": 734976400, "item_id": 45936025, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45936025", "by": "yokljo", "date": "2025-11-15", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I just used Acorn [0] to parse my JS, then directly evaluated the AST.", "excerpt": "Nice. I built something basically just like this for work for the same reason last year. It only look a few hours though, cause I just used Acorn [0] to parse my JS, then directly evaluated the AST. It also had an iteration limit and other configurable limits so I can eval stuff in the browser without crashing the tab. I did not use an LLM. [0]: https://github.com/acornjs/acorn", "context": "", "use_case": "JavaScript parsing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Designing a Language (2017)"}, {"id": 732744225, "item_id": 45796514, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796514", "by": "blub", "date": "2025-11-02", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For casual users and likely some pro users, there\u2019s still Pixelmator Pro and Acorn.", "excerpt": "For casual users and likely some pro users, there\u2019s still Pixelmator Pro and Acorn. I used to use Photoshop CS for web design many years ago and they\u2019re good enough for that. This Canva app\u2019s so dumb, even their log-in doesn\u2019t work. I wanted to log in once and then keep it offline, in the hope that they would keep their promise and allow long offline use. If it\u2019s so buggy it will probably accidentally log itself out ", "context": "", "use_case": "image editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Affinity enshittification: How Canva's \"Four Pledges\" aged like milk"}]}