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Programming Languages

The most popular blog posts about programming languages on Hacker News. 227 posts.

2013
2

About Python 3

Python community, friends, fellow developers, we need to talk. On December 3rd, 2008 Python 3.0 was first released. At the time it was widely said that Python 3 adoption was going to be a long process, it was referred to as a five year process. We’ve just passed the five year mark.

7

Booting to Rust

A couple nights ago I was looking over the UEFI spec, and I realized it shouldn't be too hard to write UEFI applications in Rust. It turns out, you can, and her…

10

Callbacks are imperative, promises are functional

You will often hear it said that JavaScript is a ‘functional’ programming language. It is described as such simply because functions are first-class values: many other features that define functional programming – immutable data, preference for recursion over looping, algebraic type systems, avoidance of side effects…

16

Why SICP Matters

In 2011, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of MIT, the Boston Globe made a list of the most important innovations developed there. They asked me to explain the importance of SICP, and this is what I sent them:

17

Learn Haskell Fast and Hard

I really believe all developers should learn Haskell. I don’t think everyone needs to be super Haskell ninjas, but they should at least discover what Haskell has to offer. Learning Haskell opens your mind.

19

The string type is broken

My previous article, “We don’t need a string type“, caused a bit of stir. Though the feedback is mixed, there is a common theme of a string being a useful feature. After doing a bit more research I can determine only one thing: most current string types are broken! Many of us believe our strings […]

22

Learn C

I started learning Objective-C about three years ago while I was studying music in Nashville, TN. Some time during high school, I had poked around in C++, but I didn’t understand it. By college, I …

28

Edward C++Hands

I’ve been looking for a good analogy of what programming in C++ feels like and I remembered this 1990 Tim Burton movie, Edward Scissorhands. It’s a darker version of Pinocchio, shot in …

29

When Haskell Is Not faster than C

This article is in response to an earlier one comparing Haskell and C, which made the claim that Haskell beats out C when it comes to speed. On a Hacker News thread I made the bold claim that the C code is rife with problems and that it is tempting to fix it.