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Intuiting Pratt Parsing
You already know that a + b * c + d is calculated as a + (b * c) + d. But how do you encode that knowledge precisely enough for a machine to act on it?
Topics /
Programming Languages
The most popular blog posts about programming languages on Hacker News. 233 posts.
122
Are you expected to run five Python type-checkers now?
Library maintainers may feel overwhelmed by the plurality of type checkers that exist. We offer some guidance on how to focus their efforts where they matter most.
123
OCaml Onboarding: Introduction to the Dune build system
Welcome to all Camleers We are back with another practical walkthrough for the newcomers of the OCaml ecosystem. We understand from the feedback we have gathered over the years that getting started with the OCaml Distribution can sometimes be perceived as challenging at first. That's why we keep it ...
124
The Isolation Trap: Erlang
Erlang's mailbox design is more disciplined than Go's channels: only the owning process can read from a mailbox, and sends are asynchronous. Yet the four failure modes of shared mutable state still show up, just in different shapes.
125
Zig 0.16.0 Release Notes
Zig is a general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust , optimal , and reusable software.
126
A better R programming experience thanks to Tree-sitter
Modern tooling for parsing, searching, formatting, editing R code, just like for other programming languages.
127
We found a bug in the hyper HTTP library
By rearchitecting the Images binding, we accidentally uncovered a bug that existed in the open-source hyper library across multiple major versions.
128
Scheme Is a Hoot
Lately I've been spending time learning Scheme and using it to implement the concepts I'm learning in my physics classes as time permits. One of the most exciting things I've been doing with this is getting my Scheme to compile to the Web thanks to Hoot. One of the biggest challenges has been the fact that Hoot is…
129
Why does C have the best file API
Ok, the title is a tongue-in-cheek, but there's very little thought put into files in most languages. It always feels a bit out of place... except in C. In fact, what you get is usually a worse version of C.
130
Symbolica 2.0: Programmable Symbols for Python and Rust
Technical articles and release notes about Symbolica, symbolic computation, numerical methods, and high-performance computer algebra.
131
A Forth-inspired language for writing websites
I don't remember where the idea came from, but I decided that it would be cool if I could write websites using a stack-based language. Something like this: : h1 ( s -- ) "<h1>" emit . "</h1>" em…
132
SBCL: the ultimate assembly code breadboard (2014)
Paul Khuong's personal blog. Some Lisp, some optimisation, mathematical or computer.
133
Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way
japanese verbs are awesome. you can take the dictionary form of a verb (for example, "taberu", to eat) and turn it into many forms: taberu ("eat"): tabemasu…
134
Everyone says assembly is untyped—everyone is wrong
TL;DR: I believe Odin's inline assembly is currently the best out of any language.The most important aspects are of this article listed below. I am not aware of any other assembly (GCC/Clang/Rust/Go...) that would combine all of these aspects:Inline assembly is organized into "templates", similar to and callable as…
135
Racket v9.1
_posted by Stephen De Gabrielle and John Clements_ We are pleased to announce Racket v9.1 is now available from https://download.racket-lang.org/. As of this release:: Documentation organization and navigation can be specialized by language family, to...
136
Understanding the Go Runtime: The Scheduler
In the previous article we explored how Go’s memory allocator manages heap memory — grabbing large arenas from the OS, dividing them into spans and size classes, and using a three-level hierarchy (mcache, mcentral, mheap) to make most allocations lock-free. A key detail was that each P (processor) gets its own memory…
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Smalltalk's Browser: Unbeatable, yet Not Enough
The four-pane System Browser has shaped Smalltalk development for forty years. It’s still brilliant at providing context. But the real problem may not be the browser itself—it may be the lack of composition between the tools that surround it.
139
I keep bouncing off the Scheme language
I have a huge appreciation for the Scheme programming language. I just seem to be unable to get it to stick in my head. This seems like a huge revelation for someone who named their blog after the Scheme textbook, but there it is. This post is the public admission I need to make, to...
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Why Target Common Lisp for Code Generation?
A blog about computers, functional languages, Lisp, and Scheme.
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Clojure: Transducers
Transducers are composable algorithmic transformations. They are independent from the context of their input and output sources and specify only the essence of the transformation in terms of an individual element. Because transducers are decoupled from input or output sources, they can be used in many different…
143
How to choose between Hindley-Milner and bidirectional typing
A false dichotomy that hides the real request
144
C++26 Contracts: Introduction to Preconditions and Postconditions
In the article about Standard Library hardening, we looked at checks for invalid Standard Library container access and other broken preconditions. I mentioned that those requirements are expressed in terms of “contracts”. But what about our code? In this post, we’ll explore contracts from C++26. We’ll start with a…
145
Needed 1+1, built a functional programming language
A deep dive into converting a simple arithmetic expression into a binary tree, leading to a custom language in C.
146
Node.js 26.0.0 (Now with Temporal)
Node.js® is a free, open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that lets developers create servers, web apps, command line tools and scripts.
147
Differences Between `Foldl` and `Foldr`
`foldl` and `foldr` can be confusing, so let's work out what's up
148
Improving the usability of C libraries in Swift
There are many interesting, useful, and fun C libraries in the software ecosystem. While one could go and rewrite these libraries in Swift, usually there is no need, because Swift provides direct interoperability with C. With a little setup, you can directly use existing C libraries from your Swift code.
149
SBCL Fibers – Lightweight Cooperative Threads
A draft design document describing lightweight userland cooperative threads for SBCL.
150
Why Objective-C
In my previous post I talk about how I got rid of hundreds of thousands of lines of Objective-C code while at Audible and I explain why keeping Objective-C code around is a terrible idea. And I explain that…