The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 14,540 posts.
Several years ago, I spent a serious chunk of time figuring out how to make really teensy ELF executable files. I started down this path because I was annoyed that all of my programs, no matter how short they were, never got smaller than 4k or so. I felt that was excessive, for C, and so I started looking at what ELF…
Clarifying the shebang (#!) mechanism: A step-by-step look using strace and kernel code shows how Linux handles script execution directly, revealing the shell isn't involved initially.
One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom. Here's a glimpse of the clarity it provides:
Someone online was solving Advent of Code problems, and had a question about last years’ day 3 . They had a working solution using regular expressions (regexes) on String values, but they wanted to use ByteString values instead for performance reasons. They were surprised, however, that there seems to be a lack of…
EDIT: Part 2 is up! It's a pedagogical pet peeve of mine when technical concepts are simply listed in their fully developed state, with little in the way of motivation, derivation, or historical context. This, I think, is like publishing a cookbook filled with beautiful pictures of cakes, but
TLDR: man pages support links, but man page readers neither display nor allow allow following them.
I have a lot in the works for the this month's Logic for Programmers release. Among other things, I'm completely rewriting the chapter on Logic Programming...
A blog mostly about Clojure programming
How to build great websites with htmx by learning a couple browser features alongside it.
In GitHub Actions, you can use the shell keyword to specify the shell that runs a given run: block. This keyword is optional for workflows but mandatory for action definitions.
Enums are one of the most popular features in Rust. An enum is a type whose value is one of a specified set of variants.
A few years ago, a lone programmer named t0st did something extraordinary: he fixed an 8-year-old bug in GTA Online that had been driving players crazy. The bug? Painfully long load times, sometimes u
It is a somewhat common question to me: how do we write C in curl to make it safe and secure for billions of installations? Some precautions we take and decisions we make. There is no silver bullet, just guidelines. As I think you can see for yourself below they are also neither strange nor … Continue reading Writing…
I went on a little low-level Nix adventure yesterday and early this morning because of this excellent blog post. In it, Farid builds up the simplest possible Nix derivation—making a file that has the contents “hello world”. Here’s what I like about it:
While my final ranking in the Google AI Contest was disappointing ( 280th ), it was a very educational experience and was totally offset by Gábor Melis' dominating win using Common Lisp as well.
Be careful what you wish for...
A deep dive into Apple’s Darwin OS and XNU kernel architecture, tracing its evolution from Mach and BSD roots to powering macOS, iOS, and Apple Silicon. This post explores the hybrid kernel’s design, its adaptation to new hardware and security paradigms, and why XNU remains a uniquely resilient and scalable foundation…
The materials for the course on compilers: built incrementally and fully in tagless-final style
An in-depth, personal journey recreating Daft Punk’s “Something About Us” in Ableton Live 12 — track by track. From synths to talkbox guitars, a nostalgic dive into French Touch culture, sound design, and the joys of music production.
One of life's greatest simple pleasures is creating something just for yourself.
What is local-first software and why does it matter? This guide covers local-first architecture, offline-capable apps with automatic sync, data ownership, and how to build a local-first web app with Vue step by step.
In the past I used AI code editors for all of my programming, but I stopped using it and recommend others to consider this as well
Since the early days of automatic computing we have had people that have felt it as a shortcoming that programming required the care and accuracy that is characteristic for the use of any formal symbolism. They blamed the mechanical slave for its strict obedience with which it carried out its given instructions, even…
Concept Motivation Imagine an open world RPG where your actions affect the price of goods, the markets reacting to anything the player may do (burn down wheat fields, cost of food increases; kill the merchants, prices differentiate between cities; sell the many swords you’ve collected on your adventures, tank the…
If someone had told me a few months ago I’d be playing with .NET again after a 15+ years hiatus I probably would have laughed at this.1 Early on in my career I played with .NET and Java, and even though .NET had done some things better than Java (as it had the opportunity to learn from some early Java mistakes), I…
Most of what I have written features in the category of notes-to-self. Mostly on how to do A or B.
