Samuel Johnson, opsimath

It would be interesting to see a frequency analysis of the non-tech subjects that tend to reach the HN front page.

Samuel Johnson has come up several times, Stoicism is a perennial favorite as is depression, burnout, and meditation; nootropics and drugs are popular.

There are just things I've noticed, however, and are not the result of any kind of systematic study.

It would be easy to perform this kind of analysis if HN articles were tagged, but unfortunately they're not, so maybe some kind of AI techniques could be used to determine the subject matter from the title and then aggregate and sort the data.

I thought that opsimath was applied to those who began learning late in life, not those who just never stopped.

Still, you can do worse than a recommendation to read some Johnson.

I had to look it up:

opsimath == a person who started learning late in life

since late 19th century: from Greek opsimathēs, from opse ‘late’ and math- ‘learn’.