2011
Using TLA+ in the Real World to Understand a Glibc Bug
TLA+ is a formal specification language that you can use to verify programs. It’s different from other formal verification systems in that it’s very pragmatic. Instead of writing proofs…
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 2,232 posts.
2012
Modern SQL: With – Organize Complex Queries
The WITH clause adds named subqueries to SQL queries. WITH is also known as Common Table Expression (CTE).
2013
Node.js and the new web front-end
The Official Web Site of Nicholas C. Zakas
2014
Jailed Just-in-Time Compilation on iOS
Saagar Jha's website.
2015
2016
Broken Ownership
In the ownership trio, we discussed 3 elements: Knowledge, Mandate and Responsibility. This article digs into various broken ownership scenarios where 1-2 of those elements are missing, what are the common symptoms and how to fix them.
2017
4 min Emacs screencast inspired by Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle
And its sibling slime-js-jack-in-browser are some conveniences that I've built around slime-js. You can find them here in my .emacs.d on github.
2018
Verilog Is Weird
Verilog is the most commonly used language for hardware design in America (VHDL is more common in Europe). Too bad it's so baroque. If you ever browse the Verilog questions on Stack Overflow , you'll find a large number of questions, usually downvoted, asking “why doesn't my code work?”, with code that's not just a…
2019
A reasonably speedy Python ray tracer
Cyrille Rossant's small ray-tracer is an nice self-contained Python program (using NumPy) that renders this 400×300 image in about 15 seconds on a fast PC:
2020
Static Type Checking in Common Lisp
There is a misconception that Lisp is a dynamically typed language and doesn’t offer compile-time type checking. Lisp being the…
2021
2022
The joys of maintenance programming (2011)
In the old days when I started programming, green programmers trying to build their skills and get experience started out doing maintenance programming. Only the old hands got to write new code. The newbies cut their teeth debugging and fixing musty old code that still worked for the business. I’ve done my share of…
2023
TIS-100: the Programming Game You Never Asked For
You know what’s universally regarded as un-fun by most programmers? Writing assembly language code. As Steve McConnell said back in 1994: Programmers working with high-level languages achieve better productivity and quality than those working with lower-level languages. Languages such as C++, Java, Smalltalk, and…
2024
“Safe C++ Subset” Is Vapourware
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
2025
Machine Learning Cheat Sheet (for scikit-learn)
As you hopefully have heard, we at scikit-learn are doing a user survey (which is still open by the way). One of the requests there was t...
2026
Idioms for the D Programming Language
Effective D Programming Language.
2027
Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch
A real bummer — Apple removed Scratch from the iTunes store, so it’s no longer available for iPad, iPhone, or iTouch. Why? Discussion on the Scratch forums suggests that it’s be…
2028
So You Want to Write Your Own CSV code
So You Want To Write Your Own CSV code? Fields separated by commas and rows separated by newline. Easy right? You can write the code yourself in just a few lines.
2029
2030
Rust's Golden Rule
I find myself thinking about a particular design principle of Rust today. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it named specifically before, but it gets referred to from…
2031
AI solves Advent of Code 2022
I will try to solve all of the advent of code with as little human input as possible
2032
QOA, the Quite OK Audio Format
Audio formats typically fall into one of three categories: “lossless” , “complicated” or “bad” . After developing a simple image format last year, I tried to come up with an audio format that fits neither of these categories.
2033
Self-Enforcing Protocols
There are several ways two people can divide a piece of cake in half. One way is to find someone impartial to do it for them. This works, but it requires another person. Another way is for one person to divide the piece, and the other person to complain (to the police, a judge, or his parents) if he doesn’t think it’s…
2034
A Path to Enlightenment in Programming Language Theory
Learning about Programming Language Theory can be a tough journey, particularly for programming practitioners who haven’t studied it formally. This resource is here to help. Please feel free to get in touch if you have ideas for improvement.
2035
Stop Validating Email Addresses With Your Complex Regex
Just stop, y’all. It’s a waste of your time and your effort. Put down your Google search for an email regular expression, take a step back, and breathe.
2036
2037
Hecto: Build your own text editor in Rust
Welcome! This is a series of blog posts that shows you how to build a text editor in Rust.
2038
Minting Money with Monero and CPU Vector Intrinsics
A blog about computer science, systems, technology, and sometimes vegan cooking.
2039
Understanding the BeagleBone’s built in microcontrollers (2016)
The BeagleBone Black is an inexpensive, credit-card sized computer that has two built-in microcontrollers called PRUs. While the PRUs provi...
2040