121
What canceled my Go context?
How Go 1.20's WithCancelCause and Go 1.21's WithTimeoutCause let you attach a reason to context cancellation, plus a gotcha with manual cancel and the stdlib pattern that covers every path.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,707 posts.
122
Why does C have the best file API
Ok, the title is a tongue-in-cheek, but there's very little thought put into files in most languages. It always feels a bit out of place... except in C. In fact, what you get is usually a worse version of C.
123
RE#: how we built the fastest regex engine in F#
around a year ago, we built a regex engine in F# that not only outperformed the ones in dotnet, but went above and beyond competing with every other industrial regex engine on a large set of industry-standard benchmarks. it also supports the full set of boolean operators (union, intersection, complement) and even a…
124
Why Objective-C
In my previous post I talk about how I got rid of hundreds of thousands of lines of Objective-C code while at Audible and I explain why keeping Objective-C code around is a terrible idea. And I explain that…
125
Rust is just a tool
A programming language should not be your identity.
126
Understanding the Go Runtime: The Memory Allocator
In the previous article we explored how the Go runtime bootstraps itself — how a Go binary goes from the operating system handing it control to your func main() running. During that bootstrap, one of the first things the runtime sets up is the memory allocator. And that’s what we’re going to explore today. Think of…
127
Parse, Don't Validate and Type-Driven Design in Rust
Applying the type-driven mindset to rust via the "Parse, don't Validate" pattern
128
Lil' Fun Langs
a pungent monad odor that attracts mathochists
129
Farewell, Rust for web
Farewell, Rust for web. For now…
130
Defer available in gcc and clang
About a year ago I posted about defer and that it would be available for everyone using gcc and/or clang soon. So it is probably time for an update. Two things have happened in the mean time: A tec…
131
How to choose between Hindley-Milner and bidirectional typing
A false dichotomy that hides the real request
132
Learning Lean: Part 1
Motivation I’ve been captivated by the recent movement to popularize mathematics formalization through the Lean theorem prover, and this year I’m diving deeper into learning it. For those unfamiliar with this revolution, I highly recommend watching Kevin Buzzard’s talks on YouTube for an overview of why formal…
133
Redefining Go Functions
I once wrote a Perl subroutine that would memoize the subroutine that called it. That much was useful, but then it inserted a copy of itself into the caller, so that its callers would be memoized too. A well-placed call to aggressively_memoize could back-propagate to the whole codebase, spreading functional purity…
134
I Wrote a Scheme in 2025
One year minus one week ago to the day I published an article announcing the new Scheme implementation I was writing, scheme-rs . Today I am excited to announce that scheme-rs has reached its first version, 0.1.0 . You can check it out at it’s website ( scheme-rs.org , which should be updated to scheme.rs at some…
135
Thoughts on Generating C
wingolog: article: six thoughts on generating c
136
Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
A Guide to comparing Claude Code Compiler with GCC
137
Understanding the Go Compiler: The Linker
In the previous post , we watched the compiler transform optimized SSA into machine code bytes and package them into object files. Each .o file contains the compiled code for one package—complete with machine instructions, symbol definitions, and relocations marking addresses that need fixing. But your program isn’t…
138
Contracts in Nix
The Nix language lacks a good type system . There are already several configuration languages that provide static and even gradual typing (see, e.g., Cue , Dhall , or Nickel ), but none offer the ability to easily annotate legacy Nix code with types.
139
Swift is a more convenient Rust (2023)
From the Archive: Thoughts on Swift, while learning Rust
140
Memory layout in Zig with formulas
I was recently encouraged to watch A Practical Guide to Applying Data Oriented Design (DoD) by Andrew Kelley, the creator of Zig1. Just 10 minutes into the talk, I was confronted with a skill I had never formally learned… the arithmetic behind memory layout of types. Zig is a modern, C-like programming language which…
141
Any application that can be written in a system language, eventually will be
Atwood's Law predicted JavaScript's dominance through accessibility. A new corollary is emerging: system languages will win through operational efficiency and AI-assisted development.
142
Tree-sitter vs. Language Servers
I got asked a good question today: what is the difference between Tree-sitter and a language server ? I don’t understand how either of these tools work in depth, so I’m just going to explain from an observable , pragmatic point of view.
143
Go 1.26 Interactive Tour
New with expressions, type-safe error checking, and faster everything.
144
Some C habits I employ for the modern day
Despite it being the first “proper” programming language I learned—by reading K&R front-to-back no less—I don’t write C too terribly often nowadays. Playing resonite has gotten me into writing a load of C# for modding the game, and most of what I do day-to-day is automating the tedium on my computer, which gets…
145
My Gripes with Prolog
It's not my favorite language
146
Is Rust faster than C?
Someone on Reddit recently asked: What would make a Rust implementation of something faster than a C implementation, all things being the same? I think this is…
147
C++ std::move doesn't move anything: A deep dive into Value Categories
Why std::move is just a cast, how it kills RVO if used wrong, and the mechanics of ownership transfer.
148
Go.sum is not a lockfile
In Go, go.mod acts as both manifest and lockfile. There is never a reason to look at go.sum.
149
Python numbers every programmer should know
A cheat sheet of real-world timing and memory numbers to guide performance-sensitive decisions.
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