10051
The case against self-closing tags in HTML
The history, facts, and opinions.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 14,544 posts.
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On Rust and Nim
I was recently contacted from a person I had never met before, asking for some comments on Nim and Rust. Since I have taken a little time to answer, I figured I might as well publish my thoughts.
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LLMs could be, but shouldn't be compilers
I’ve been going round and round in my mind about a particular discussion around LLMs: are they really similar to compilers? Are we headed toward a world where people don’t look at the underlying code for their programs?
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The Art of Picking Intel Registers (2003)
I wrote this article for an online magazine called Scene Zine . Scene Zine caters to the Demo Scene, which is an digital art community dedicated to pushing the limits of computers through a mix of music, art, and computer programming. A particular category of demoscene productions, 4K intros, focus on the final…
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Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99% (2012)
In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is a currently-undetermined type of ...
10058
Distribution of JVM Desktop Applications
This is the 6th post in the The state of JVM desktop frameworks focus series.
10059
Docker in Production: A retort
This blog covers various issues I encounter and the (sometimes creative) solutions I apply.
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Gradual Programming
Programming is a fundamentally incremental (or gradual) process, and our programming languages should reflect that. I show several ways in which program models transition over time and discuss how future research can further a human-centric vision for programming languages.
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What's New in PHP 8.1
PHP 8.1 adds support for PHP enums, as well as readonly properties, Fibers, performance improvements, new in initializers, and more.
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This is valid Python syntax
Sometimes it's even useful too
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A bug which affected only left handed users
Verily, some of our brethren (and sistren) be afflicted with a sinister disposition. While the righteous scroll using the thumb of their right hand - as is good and proper - an accurs'd minority swing the other way. Look, you try writing an interesting bug report without sounding like a clanker, OK! I try to optimise…
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Results of the SQL Performance Quiz
SQL indexing: 60% don’t know how to get it right
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There is no software maintenance
Every time I hear about software maintenance as a distinct activity, I cringe. That’s because it is based on the outdated notion that first software is developed, then it is maintained. But t…
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Don’t invert that matrix (2010)
There is hardly ever a good reason to invert a matrix. What do you do if you need to solve Ax = b where A is an n x n matrix? Isn't the solution A−1 b? Yes, theoretically. But that doesn't mean you need to actually find A−1. Solving the equation Ax = b is
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The “Web Application” Myth
The last few weeks were full of lots of great articles about an old topic: should things on the internet be dependent on JavaScript and…
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JavaScript Benchmarking Is a Mess
Design decisions core to JavaScript have caused a multitude of problems for benchmarking. Is there a solution to this?
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Why Isn’t Programming Futuristic?
If you think someone is asking a rhetorical question, it is usually most interesting to treat it as though it is a legitimate question. Especially if we’re talking about something hard — driving down to underlying assumptions through this questioning process is interesting.
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The Little Things: Speeding up C++ compilation
This post is based on an internal training I prepared for my employer, Locksley, and showcases some source-level techniques for improving C++ compilation times.
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UUID Benchmark War
This month’s PGSQL Phriday #015 topic is about UUIDs, hosted by Lætitia Avrot. Lætitia has called for a debate. No, no, no. I say let’s have an all-out war. A benchmark war. I have deci…
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ULIDs and Primary Keys
Not all non-sequential primary keys are created equal, the ULID format is a fantastic substitute for the typical UUIDv4 choice.
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The end of "Useless Ruby sugar": On intuitions and evolutions
I wrote the analysis of “useless sugar” features of Ruby for two months, and I regret nothing.
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How to Scale a System from 0 to 10M+ Users
Scaling is a complex topic, but after working at big tech on services handling millions of requests and scaling my own startup (AlgoMaster.io) from scratch, I’ve realized that most systems evolve through a surprisingly similar set of stages as they grow.
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My mental model of how alpha opacity works is wrong (2020)
When plotting overlapping elements with a defined alpha (opacity), I had always thought about it as an additive process with results clamped to not exceed 1.
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Maps and Memory Leaks in Go
A map can always grow in memory; it never shrinks. Hence, if it leads to some memory issues, you can try different options.