1801
In software, when an engineer exits the team
My perspective when a team member gives their notice
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,497 posts.
1802
1803
Playing the Open Source Game
You've surely read plenty about how simple is good, but what's wrong with easy?
1804
Let's write a compiler, part 1: Introduction, selecting a language, and planning
I think we all knew this might be coming once we finished up with our assembler . While we can in theory solve any computable problem by writing the appropriate assembly for our assembler, writing assembly code can be a bit more cumbersome than a high-level language. There is a reason why we did not write our…
1805
Why I’ll never create modules for VCV Rack anymore–and what I’ll make instead
An old article, now removed due to being an old time capsule.
1806
How to Safely Think in Systems
While there are a decent number of folks out there modeling systems, there’s a much larger group of folks who think of themselves as systems thinkers but utilize techniques like modeling rather casually (a polite way of saying that they don’t use them). Even with modeling tools available, I’ve often taken the shortcut…
1807
iDOS 2 will be gone soon
Recently I tried to submit an iDOS update with a few bug fixes, but then got a notification from Apple Review Team, and my heart dropped cold.
1808
What does my engineering manager do all day?
I officially transitioned from a lead frontend engineer to a senior engineering manager this year and wanted to provide some insight into…
1809
Are Experts Real?
Credentials, Expertise, and Feedback Loops
1810
My tutorial and take on C++20 coroutines
Over the last 25 years, I’ve written a lot of event-driven code in C++. A typical example of event-driven code is registering a callback that gets invoked every time a socket has data to be read. Once you have read an entire message, possibly after many invocations, you parse the message and invoke another callback…
1811
1812
We need more boutique search engines
For most queries, Google search is pretty underwhelming these days. Google is great at answering questions with an objective answer, like “# of billionaires in the world” or “What is the population of Iceland”. It’s pretty bad at answering questions that require judgment and context like “What do NFT collectors think…
1813
What data on myself I collect and why (2020)
How I am using 50+ sources of my personal data
1814
Non-Transitive Dice
We describe a set of very unusual dice, and a two player game where you will always have the advantage. You can even teach your opponent how the game works, yet still win again! Finally, we will describe a new game for three players where you can expect to beat both players at the same time! Watch James Grime and…
1815
1816
Again on 0-based vs. 1-based indexing
André Garzia made a nice blog post called “Lua, a misunderstood language” recently, and unfortunately (but perhaps unsurprisingly) a bulk of HN comments on it was about the age-old 0-based vs. 1-based indexing debate. You see, Lua uses 1-based indexing, and lots of programmers claimed this is unnatural because “every…
1817
1818
Open source is not a business model (2018)
Person 1: Did you know that 60% of restaurants close within three years of opening ?
1819
1820
US Customs Export Control Says: I’m Screwed
Update: It looks like this problem may have been resolved by USPS, with international shipments sent May 11 or later proceeding normally. But there’s still confusion about the source of the problem, the date it was resolved, and whether it’s truly fixed. It appears it’s necessary to buy new postage to reship any…
1821
No general method to detect fraud
The parts of a convincing deception
1822
The Human Side of Elixir
In this blog post, we take a look at the Elixir programming language from the engineer/business perspective.
1823
Reducing Rust Incremental Compilation Times on macOS
How I reduced Rust incremental debug build times on macOS from 14 seconds down to 4 seconds.
1824
Writing a Programming Book in 2021
It is said that there are three things you must do in your lifetime: plant a tree, have a child, and write a book. I recently finished the last one. Nevertheless, I wrote a programming book.
1825
Interview with Patrick Collison
In addition to being a friend and a Noahpinion subscriber, Patrick Collison is one of the world’s most successful founder-CEOs.
1826
1827
An NFT without a blockchain
This is a small proof-of-concept. It relies on PGP - but you could use Keybase, GPG, or any other hard-to-use encryption program. Background Suppose you want to support an artist and give them money. That's easy. Most artists take PayPal, bank transfer, or cash. But how can you prove that you've paid an artist for a…
1828
Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.
Many people see a homelessness crisis, but what does the data say? We examine different locations, rates of change, types of homelessness, and mental health and substance abuse issues.
1829
Why Clojure? (2018)
Why not the programming language I'm already using or some other language? What makes Clojure uniquely well-suited for modern software development? Instead of…
1830