Varun Gandhi

My current interests include compilers, databases, version control, developer tools, light-weight formal methods, and resilience engineering. Feel free to or send me an email or message me on Twitter . I prefer email since I don't check Twitter DMs that often.

Popular posts: 6
Total points: 1,089
HN comments: 700
Rank: #1,927 personal

Visit typesanitizer.com → On Hacker News Apr 2022 – Jul 2026

Software Engineering 6 Systems & Performance 4 Programming Languages 1 Career & Management 1

Most points Most discussed Most cited Newest

An epic treatise on error models for systems programming languages

2025221 points76 comments Software Engineering details

Musings on the representation, propagation and handling of errors in existing programming languages, as well as thoughts on future systems. (15K+ words)

Optimizers need a rethink

2024149 points167 comments Software Engineering details

Thoughts on how compiler and database optimizers should evolve in the future, focusing on predictability and guarantees instead of smarts and heroics

Job queues are deceptively tricky

2026143 points48 comments Software Engineering details

A worked out example of different job queueing semantics and how they affect workloads.

Meta-analysis of three different notions of software complexity

2025109 points19 comments Software Engineering details

Discussion on notions of software complexity as defined by Rich Hickey, John Ousterhout and Zach Tellman.