Topics /

Programming Languages

The most popular blog posts about programming languages on Hacker News. 3,708 posts.

Any year
1291

Generics facilitators in Go

Go 1.18 is going to be released with generics support . Adding generics to Go was a multi-year effort and was a difficult one. Go type system is not a traditional type system and it was not possible just to bring an existing generics implementation from other language and be done. The current proposal was accepted…

1294

Some Lisp books (2012)

caveat: tthis is not a best-of nor a comprehensive list of Lisp books; it is merely a selection of Lisp books you may not have heard of or that special to me in some way. If you find this post interesting then you might like my yearly best-of posts .

1301

Four limitations of Rust's borrow checker

I’ve been using Rust for hobby projects since 2016 and have been working professionally in Rust since 2021, so I tend to consider myself pretty knowledgeable about Rust. I’m already familiar with all the common limitations of Rust’s type system and how to work around them, so it’s pretty rare that I have to “fight the…

1307

The Development of the C Language (2003)

C came into being in the years 1969-1973, in parallel with the early development of the Unix operating system; the most creative period occurred during 1972. Another spate of changes peaked between 1977 and 1979, when portability of the Unix system was being demonstrated. In the middle of this second period, the first…

1314

Changing the Rules of Rust

In Rust, there are certain API decisions about what is and isn’t sound that impact all Rust code. That is, a decision was made to allow or not allow types which have certain safety requirements, and now all users are committed to that decision. They can’t just use a different API with different rules: all APIs must…

1316

WTF is going on with R7RS Large?

The reaction to John Cowan’s resignation as chair of the R 7 RS Large working group has been somewhat wider than I think anyone expected, making it onto general interest programming forums. Scheme may be a small island, but when it has an earthquake, it makes waves through the whole archipelago of programming…

1320

Fitting a FORTH in 512 bytes

Software is full of circular dependencies if you look deep enough. Compilers written in the language they compile are the most obvious example, but not the only one. To compile a kernel, you need a running kernel. Linkers, build systems, shells. Even text editors, if you want to write the code instead of just…