541
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 14,535 posts.
542
Learning Software Architecture
In reply to an email asking about learning software design skills as a researcher physicist:
543
If AI writes your code, why use Python?
For the last decade, fast-to-ship beat fast-to-run. Not anymore.
544
An idiot’s guide to lead optimisation for proteins
Lead optimisation is the step in drug design where you take a molecule that sort of works and try to make it actually work, and it’s arguably the step where most real-world design campaigns succeed or die. Due to the influence of a couple of my pals , I have recently become interested in using machine learning to do…
545
Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability
yes, as in singular one. Back in April 2026 Anthropic caused a lot of media noise when they concluded that their new AI model Mythos is dangerously good at finding security flaws in source code. Apparently Mythos was so good at this that Anthropic would not release this model to the public yet but instead … Continue…
546
I'm going back to writing code by hand
I vibe-coded a GPU-aware Kubernetes TUI for 7 months, archived it, and started over. Here's what AI gets wrong when projects grow complex.
547
An AI coding agent, used to write code, needs to reduce your maintenance costs
I’ll get straight to the point: your AI coding agent, the one you use to write code, needs to reduce your maintenance costs. Not by a little bit, either. You write code twice as quick now? Better hope you’ve halved your maintenance costs. Three times as productive? One third the maintenance costs. Otherwise, you’re…
548
Training an LLM in Swift, Part 1: Taking matrix mult from Gflop/s to Tflop/s
10 implementations of handwritten matrix multiplication: from plain C and Swift through to Metal
549
I’ve banned query strings
I don’t like people adding tracking stuff to URLs. Still less do I like people adding tracking stuff to my URLs.
550
A History of IDEs at Google
Laurent Le Brun's blog
551
How do I deal with memory leaks? (2022)
These are questions about C++ Style and Technique that people ask me often. If you have better questions or comments on the answers, feel free to email me (bs at cs dot tamu dot edu). Please remember that I can't spend all of my time improving my homepages.
552
Just Use Go
Hey, dipshit. You know what compiles in two seconds, deploys as a single binary, and doesn't shit itself when a transitive dependency gets yanked from npm at 3am? Go. The same way HTML has been sitting there since the dawn of the goddamn internet waiting for you to stop overcomplicating the frontend, Go has been…
553
Building a web server in aarch64 assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
a static http server in aarch64 assembly
554
Agents need control flow, not more prompts
Thesis: reliable agents tackling complex tasks need deterministic control flow encoded in software, not increasingly elaborate prompt chains If you’ve eve...
555
Making your own programming language is easier than you think (but also harder)
In mid-December last year I started making my own programming language. It's waaay far from any production quality yet (though I did manage to write a working 1k LOC Monte-Carlo path tracer in it), but the project is on pause right now, so I figured it's a good time to write something about it.
556
Mythical Man Month
a bliki entry for Mythical Man Month
557
Programming Still Sucks
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: aren't you worried AI is taking your job? I glance around and see a…
558
I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up
Starting a long-form history of Visual Basic on EvilGeniusLabs.ca. Chapter 1 covers the BASIC dynasty Microsoft had been running since 1975, the California developer Microsoft bought to put a face on it, and the launch pitch Bill Gates seeded in BYTE Magazine eighteen months before VB shipped. Six articles, focused on…
559
Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like
I recently talked with Joseph Ruscio about AI coding tools for Heavybit’s High Leverage podcast: Ep. #9, The AI Coding Paradigm Shift with Simon Willison. Here are some of my …
560
OurCar: What I learned making an app for my family
An adventure in making a utility
561
The vi family
The last text editor you’ll ever need to learn.
562
Reverse-engineering the 1998 Ultima Online demo server
After 10 years of on-and-off work, I’m releasing a full reverse-engineering of the 1998 Ultima Online demo server: https://github.com/draxinar/ouo . About 5,000 functions disassembled from MSVC x86 and translated into portable C99, with each function compared instruction-by-instruction against the binary.
563
Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?
Ten lessons for coding with agents, from implementing to learn to remembering that code is cheap but maintenance and security aren’t.
564
Hand Drawn QR Codes (2025)
I really like QR codes. Recently I purchased a new sticky-note-like pad from a new local stationery store in Minneapolis. The sheets have a 10x10 grid and 2x10 grid. I knew what I wanted to...
565
Agent Skills
AI coding agents take the shortest path to done, which usually means skipping the specs, tests, and reviews that make software reliable at scale. Agent Skill...
566
I am worried about Bun
Bun is excellent software. Anthropic owns it now, Bun sits under Claude Code, and Claude Code getting worse makes me worried Bun could follow the same enshittification path.
567
568
569
The 'Hidden' Costs of Great Abstractions
In the world of computing, we tend to abstract away complexity. Doing so seems liberating. It enables us to focus on the bigger picture. Unfortunately, in doing so, the fidelity of our understanding often decreases. We sometimes end up blinding ourselves.
570
Agentic Coding Is a Trap
Remaining vigilant about cognitive debt and atrophy.