Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,707 posts.
Python built-ins worth learning
Update: You can find a newer version of this article on Python Morsels. In every Intro to Python class I teach, there’s always at least one “how...
A decade of developing a programming language
In 2013, I had an idea: "what if I were to build my programming language?". Back then my idea came down to "an interpreted language that mixes elements from Ruby and Smalltalk", and not much more.
ClojureScript Year in Review
It’s been a very exciting year for ClojureScript. It’s clear that things have been accelerating and here is a personal selection of highlights:
Reimplementing “git clone” in Haskell from the bottom up (2013)
In order to give some structure to my ongoing investigation of git’s data structures, protocols and implementation I decided to re-implement git clone without using any of git’s plumbing commands or any of the existing git libraries. Along the way I tried to keep some implementation notes that should help to…
We need less powerful languages
We need languages and systems that are less powerful, not more powerful, and easy ways to create and use such languages.
Baby Steps: Slowly Porting Musl to Rust
ramblings by Adam Perry
Compiling Ruby to machine language
I've started working on a new edition of Ruby Under a Microscope that covers Ruby 3.x. I'm working on this in my spare time, so it will take a while. Leave a comment or drop me a line and I'll email you when it's finished.
What Is Good About Haskell?
Update 5/10/2019: check the bottom of this post for some links to comments and discussion.
From First Principles: Why Scala?
Scala, first appearing in 2004, is neither an old stalwart nor a new player in the programming language market. This post will discuss the unique combination of features that Scala provides and how it compares to other languages on the market, diving beneath the superficial experience to explore the fundamentals of…
Why I Program in Lisp
A blog about computers, functional languages, Lisp, and Scheme.
PHP in 2020
PHP isn't the same old crappy language it was ten years ago
Learn C
I started learning Objective-C about three years ago while I was studying music in Nashville, TN. Some time during high school, I had poked around in C++, but I didn’t understand it. By college, I …
Learning Rust via Advent of Code
How I used Advent of Code to learn about the programming language Rust.
A Friendly Introduction to Assembly for High-Level Programmers
A friendly introduction to assembly for high-level programmers — Hello
Where Do Type Systems Come From?
Every time I want to quickly understand something about an advanced type system or programming language concept I get lost when I see something like this on Wikipedia:
Rust for tokenising and parsing
Macros, iterators, patterns, error handling and match make Rust almost perfect
Amount of profanity in git commit messages per programming language
Andrew Vos's personal site
Lisp is not based on the Lambda Calculus
How do you condense a 30 minute talk in 5 minutes? Should you even try? These are the questions I struggled with when someone nudged me to register for the lightning talks. My talk was 30 minute long because I was to jump in if a last-minute incident would prevent someone to get on stage. Call me the backup speaker…
Obfuscating “Hello World” in Python
Fun with functional programming in Python | Ben Kurtovic's blog
Go hits the concurrency nail on the head
More than thirteen years have passed since Herb Sutter declared that the free lunch is over and concurrency is upon us , and yet it's hard to claim that most mainstream languages have made a strong shift towards concurrent modes of programming. We have to admit that concurrency is just hard , and the struggles of some…
I built a programming language that LLMs can't use
I built KillSwitch, an esoteric language designed to confound LLMs and coding agents, and benchmarked the major models against it.