331
Falsehoods programmers believe about undefined behavior
All kinds of reasonable-sounding beliefs about undefined behavior are wrong. Let's go through them.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,821 posts.
332
Open Source and Saying “No”
An Open Source project can balloon to extreme sizes and then lose purpose of why it started - a rant.
333
GCC undefined behaviors are getting wild
Happy with my recent breakthrough in understanding C integer divisions after weeks of struggle, I was minding my own business having fun writing integer arithmetic code. Life was good, when suddenly… zsh: segmentation fault (core dumped) .
334
The AI war and how to win it
The battle for the future of the world
335
Clang is better than GCC
Yes, this is a problem of weak static typing of pure C. Pure C is a great tool for some jobs, but here be dragons , as they say.
336
Git Notes
the short of it is: they’re cool for appending notes from automated systems (like ticket or build systems) but not really for having interactive conversations with other developers (at least not yet)
337
The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi
Not really. As a counter example, gold is clear and very old ponzi. It's ok. And as a more general argument, crypto does have utility. For circumventing capital controls, buying drugs or laundering money. So there will be constant supply of new depositors who needs that and willing to pay. I would not bet on crypto…
338
Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming
An Introduction to Statistical Process Control.
339
Emacs Lisp shorthands as namespacing system
In Emacs version 28 Emacs developers introduced so-called read symbol shorthands. If you’re interested in the rationale, feel free to search the Emacs developer mailing list for the discussion. However, it does seem that not everyone likes the idea of shorthands as a substitution for namespaces (or packages, if you’re…
340
Index Merges vs. Composite Indexes in Postgres and MySQL
Composite indexes aka multi-column indexes are about 10x faster than index merges. In Postgres, the gap is larger than in MySQL because Postgres doesn’t support index-only scans for queries that involve index merges.
341
Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on
Please. It’s an insult to my brain. Like, you put the button in one place, and then you’re like “nah, let’s move it somewhere else.” Here…
342
CRDT: Fractional Indexing
Collaborative peer-to-peer applications sometimes need to operate on sequences of objects with a consistent order across all peers. For example, a peer-to-peer photo album application might need to sync the order in which photos appear in an album.
343
Coping strategies for the serial project hoarder
I gave a talk at DjangoCon US 2022 in San Diego last month about productivity on personal projects, titled “Massively increase your productivity on personal projects with comprehensive documentation and …
344
345
Babashka Clojure nREPL as a system interface
Dmitri's blog about programming, Clojure, and software development
346
WebAssembly: TinyGo vs. Rust vs. AssemblyScript
A browser sorting benchmark comparing JavaScript, Go, TinyGo, Rust, and AssemblyScript, with source code and test conditions.
347
Bye, Twitter
Today I’m leaving Twitter, because I don’t like making unpaid contributions to a for-profit publisher whose proprietor is an alt-right troll. But also because it’s probably going to break down. Read on for details.
348
Startup Restructuring 101
Because your lifeblood, Revenue and Funding, are drying up
349
A bug fix in the 8086 microprocessor, revealed in the die's silicon
The 8086 microprocessor was a groundbreaking processor introduced by Intel in 1978. It led to the x86 architecture that still dominates de...
350
Converting a WW2-Era Engine Cowl Flaps Indicator into a USB Peripheral
General Electric 8DJ4PBV quad engine cowling indicator with PIC16F1459 and MCP41HV31-502 board to its right. A Microsoft Surface in the background is controlling the indicators via USB.
351
Interview with Keith Blount, Creator of Scrivener
An interview with Keith Blount, the founder, director and lead developer of Literature & Latte.
352
Data-Oriented Programming in Python
Many users of Python deprioritize performance in favor of soft benefits like ergonomics, business value, and simplicity. Users who prioritize performance typically end up on faster compiled languages like C++ or Java.
353
I/O is no longer the bottleneck
In 2022, disk I/O is very fast, and not usually the performance bottleneck in programs. This article digs into some numbers.
354
355
Cache invalidation really is one of the hardest problems in computer science
My colleagues recently wrote a great post on the Netflix tech blog about a tough performance issue they wrestled with. They ultimately diagnosed the problem as false sharing, which is a performance…
356
AI Art Panic
If you’ve been on the internet at all lately, you’ve seen AI generated art and discussion of the impact of the tools. You’ve also probably seen a lot of hate for AI generated art. There’s a lot of drama going on, as art focused communities across the internet decide how to handle this. Does AI generated/assisted art…
357
New two-factor authenticator: Commodore 64
Multi-factor authentication is ripe for disruption. SMS 2FA is inherently defective. Phone authenticators get stolen. Security tokens get lo...
358
Making all your integers positive with zigzag encoding
You sometimes feel the need to make all of your integers positive, without losing any information. That is, you want to map all of your integers from 'signed' integers (e.g., -1, 1, 3, -3) to 'unsigned integers' (e.g., 3,2,6,7). This could be useful if you have a fast function to compress integers that fails to ……
359
360
