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Programming Languages

The most popular blog posts about programming languages on Hacker News. 283 posts.

2025
33

I Wrote a WebAssembly VM in C

For the last 6 months, I’ve been spending my (limited) free time on evenings and weekends writing a WebAssembly VM in C. After repeatedly throwing away small side-projects, this was an extremely productive experience for me as an engineer. I’m writing this in order to put together some take-aways and organize my…

37

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…

38

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

40

Phrase origin: Why do we "call" functions?

On StackExchange, someone asks why programmers talk about “calling” a function. Several possible allusions spring to mind: Calling a function is like calling on a friend — we go, we stay a while, we come back. Calling a function is like calling for a servant — a summoning to perform a task. Calling a function is like…

53

Why don't you use dependent types?

To be fair, nobody asks me this exact question. But people have regularly asked why Isabelle dispenses with proof objects. The two questions are essentially the same, because proof objects are intrinsic to all the usual type theories. They are also completely unnecessary and a huge waste of space. As described in an…

56

How to program a text adventure in C

This is not a C tutorial; there are plenty of those on the web. The reader is assumed to have some basic knowledge of programming in general, and preferrably the C programming language in particular. Maybe you just finished reading a tutorial somewhere, and you would like to learn some more about programming by…