PostScript
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 87 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
Recommended as a full, Turing-complete language that doubles as a file format, with a Lisp-like feel. Critics say it is clumsy for image processing and has small number limits.
Recommended as a full, Turing-complete language that doubles as a file format, with a Lisp-like feel. Critics say it is clumsy for image processing and has small number limits.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 76%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Full programming language, Turing complete
“PostScript is the authoring language: loops, conditionals, a full interpreter.”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs” “It is extremely useful to have a full programing language as a file format”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “An SVG is all you need” “Postscript is pretty neat IMHO and it's Turing complete.”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “We pwned X, Vercel, Cursor, and Discord through a supply-chain attack” Lisp-like but more approachable
“It's actually a pretty great language, like lisp/scheme but I found it to be more approachable somehow.”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “Running Adobe's 1991 PostScript Interpreter in the Browser” “had quite a lispy interactive feeling to it”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “Running Adobe's 1991 PostScript Interpreter in the Browser” Decent language with text and binary formats
“PostScript is not so bad as a programming language, and it has a binary format as well as a text format, although the limits of numbers and some other things can be too small for many applications.”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “Things I don't like in configuration languages” “PostScript is a pretty good language by some metrics”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language – Whitebeard's Realm”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Less used these days
“One of the reasons we don't use PostScript so much any more.”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft: Copilot is for entertainment purposes only” “turned out to be less useful”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “What the hell have you built”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
16 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“PostScript is the authoring language: loops, conditionals, a full interpreter.”
“he preferred that to using drawing programs”
“I don't think anyone loves PostScript though”
“Anyone who is interested in PostScript should definitely get "The Green Book" by Glenn Reid”
“they are clumsy, don't support any kind of image processing”
“It's actually a pretty great language, like lisp/scheme but I found it to be more approachable somehow.”
“had quite a lispy interactive feeling to it”
“PostScript (with its reverse Polish notation going beyond simple arithmetics) rewired by brain”
“PostScript is a pretty good language by some metrics”
“One of the reasons we don't use PostScript so much any more.”
“It loaded a lot faster than the PostScript Tiger.”
“Postscript is pretty neat IMHO and it's Turing complete.”
“in Forth and PostScript, I regularly have bugs where I pass a parameter to, or receive a result from, the wrong place”
“It is extremely useful to have a full programing language as a file format”
“PostScript is not so bad as a programming language, and it has a binary format as well as a text format, although the limits of numbers and some other things can be too small for many applications.”
“turned out to be less useful”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.