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Stunned by Go
The original working title for this post was "Go is hostile to developers". This was named at a time of extreme frustration, and it didn't ...
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,707 posts.
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A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming
The x86 instruction set architecture is at the heart of CPU s that power our home computers and remote servers for over two decades. Being able to read and write code in low-level assembly language is a powerful skill to have. It enables you to write faster code, use machine features unavailable in C, and…
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A practical introduction to functional programming (2013)
Many functional programming articles teach abstract functional techniques. That is, composition, pipelining, higher order functions. This one is different. I...
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My thoughts after using Clojure for about a month
I am now generating this website with Clojure (yes, right after rewriting it in GNU Make and shell ; I have a problem, ok?). In a personal tradition, I used writing a static site generator as the project to play with and learn Clojure as a new language. While I’ve long scoffed at Clojure for its copious syntax ( three…
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X86 is a high-level language
Just so you know, x86 machine-code is now a "high-level" language. What instructions say, and what they do, are very different things. I m...
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TinyCompiler: A compiler in a week-end
Have you ever wondered how a compiler works, but you never found courage to find out? Then this series of articles is for you. I have never had the chance to look under the hood either, but one week-end I have decided to to write a translator from the esoteric programming language wend (short for week-end), which I…
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The paradigms of programming
The paradigms of programming Floyd, CACM 1979 (Also available in ) A couple of weeks ago we looked at Dan Bernstein’s very topical “thoughts on security after ten years of qmail 1.0.” From the gene…
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Python performance: it’s not just the interpreter
I have a particular view of Python performance from my experience on the Pyston project, and since this view is somewhat nonstandard I wanted to take some time to explain it and give a motivating e…
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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…
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Hyrum’s Law in Golang
Occurrence of Hyrum's law in Golang
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Rust Ownership Rules
A gentle and beginner friendly overview of Rust Ownership Rules
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Use Your Type System
Today I'm discussing a trivially simple technique that I've rarely seen used in production codebases. In programming, we often need to deal with simple values that can be represented by simple, generic types built into our programming language or provided by libraries: types like integer, string, or UUID. In any
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scrapscript.py
Scrapscript is a small, pure, functional, content-addressable, network-first programming language. It’s designed to allow creating small, simply shareable programs. The language was created by Taylor Troesh and the main implementation was created by me and Chris.
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Clojure Design Patterns
Disclaimer: Most patterns are easy to implement because we use dynamic typing, functional programming and, of course, Clojure. Some of them look wrong and ugly. It’s okay. All characters are fake, coincidences are accidental.
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C++26 is done: ISO C++ standards meeting Trip Report
News flash: C++26 is done! 🎉 On Saturday, the ISO C++ committee completed technical work on C++26 in (partly) sunny London Croydon, UK. We resolved the remaining international comments on the C++26…
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PHP 8: Before and After
The impact of PHP 8 on my code
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Zig, the Small Language
Zig programming language is new, but it's getting a well deserved attention. Can it be a good fit for small-and-simple programming tasks?
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A Year in Clojure
A lot has changed since my last post nearly a year ago. I want to write about my experience coming from a ML-family language to a Lisp. It’s not very informa...
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LLVM Intermediate Representation is better than assembly
The crucial part is IR. It's a common language that sits between the high-level program and the low-level backend . IR is used to express high level concepts and is specific enough that any backend can produce a fast machine code.
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Why SICP Matters
In 2011, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of MIT, the Boston Globe made a list of the most important innovations developed there. They asked me to explain the importance of SICP, and this is what I sent them:
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C++ is an absolute blast
Where I try to explain why I feel like C\+\+ is so much fun, and to correct some misinformation.
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Classes vs. Data Structures
Or rather, an object is a set of functions that operate on implied data elements.
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State of the Common Lisp ecosystem, 2020
This is a description of the Common Lisp ecosystem, as of January, 2021, from the perspective of a user and contributor.The purpose of this article is both to give an overview of the ecosystem, and to help drive consolidation in each domain.Each application domain has recommendations for consolidating that part of the…