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Software Engineering

The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 537 posts.

2013
302

How statically linked programs run on Linux

In this article I want to explore what happens when a statically linked program gets executed on Linux. By statically linked I mean a program that does not require any shared objects to run, even the ubiquitous libc . In reality, most programs one encounters on Linux aren't statically linked, and do require one or…

308

Software Development Estimates: Where Do I Start?

For some reason many people discuss the problem of estimating software development timeframes without properly understanding the issue. There is a famous answer on Quora that exemplifies this. Lots of people like that story, even though it’s inaccurate and misguided. “Software development” is such a huge endeavor that…

309

Maven is broken by design

The other day, someone asked about the status of the GWT Mavenization, saying he loves Maven and would like to help. I replied that “I used to really like it” but wasn't “so sure nowadays.” It obviously was followed by “I know it could cause issues if not used in the proper way […] Do you mind telling me why you don't…

311

Light Table a year ago

A year ago today I put up the original blog post for Light Table . It was just a simple video of a prototype I made in less than a week while I was visiting my grandparents without internet - at the time we had no idea what it would become. To be honest, I thought some would think it was neat, but then it would fade…

312

Memory Allocators 101

For the last few weeks, I've been working on a couple of patches to tcmalloc, Google's super high performance memory allocator. I'm going to post about them soon, but first I thought it would be cool to give some background about what a memory allocator actually does. So, if you've ever wondered what happens when you…

313

Advanced Vim Registers

Registers in Vim are best thought of as scratch spaces for text, some of which are automatically filled by the editor in response to certain actions. Learning how to use registers fluently has a lot of subtle benefits, although it takes some getting used to because the syntax for using them is a little awkward.

316

Why no curl 8

In this little piece I'll explain why there won't be any version 8 of curl and libcurl in a long time. I won't rule out that it might happen at some point in the future. Just that it won't happen anytime soon and explain the reasons why. Seven point twenty nine, really? We've done 29 … Continue reading Why no curl 8 →

319

Learn to code like it's 1996

I’ve been meaning to write up my take on the learn to code movement for quite some time now, but for one reason or another haven’t managed to get around to it. Now that the president is endorsing Computer Science and telling Americans to learn to code, this post has jumped to the top of my priority list.

325

The Go 1.1 scheduler

One of the big features for Go 1.1 is the new scheduler, contributed by Dmitry Vyukov. The new scheduler has given a dramatic increase in performance for parallel Go programs and with nothing better to do, I figured I'd write something about it.

330

Haskell in Production: 12 Months Building ApiEngine

Web development in Haskell is efficient, contorting, rewarding, frustrating and elegant all at the same time. 12 Months building production quality Haskell has taught many lessons, and in this talk we will discuss the amazing, with the downright painful, and hope to provide a glimpse at what it is like building real…