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The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,136 posts.
As the popularity of zig cc, more developers may realize Zig is not only a programming language, but also a toolchain to help maintaining C/C++/Zig project. Today I want to discuss one vital part of this toolchain: Zig's build system, build.zig the first non-trivial Zig program for newcomers. Note: This post is based…
More on MMO Architecture:- MMO Architecture: Source of truth, Dataflows, I/O bottlenecks and how to solve them- MMO Architecture: Optimizing Server Performance with Lockless Queues- MMO Architectur…
I explain what is so unique about the RWKV language model.
Languages that suffer success often have to do so by selling out and adding features that go against some of the original purposes of their design. SQL is a...
If you ever tried to learn how the Harris corner detection algorithm works, you might have noticed that the process is not intuitive at all. First, you start with an energy function, approximate it using Taylor approximation, get a matrix from that, then find the eigenvalues of that matrix, etc. But when you come to…
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
In general, when working in C I avoid the standard library, libc, as much as possible. If possible I won’t even link it. For people not used to working and thinking this way, the typical response is confusion. Isn’t that like re-inventing the wheel? For me, libc is a wheel barely worth using — too many deficiencies in…
Or, how the feature that allows to write less names might make the code more explicit.
Figuring out how much parallelism your program can use is surprisingly tricky.
Discover the hidden power of Svelte – the JavaScript framework that feels like déjà vu. Uncover how Svelte simplifies web development, reimagining JS.
I was working on a new installation where I didn’t have this in place yet and I kept trying to update a shell function, re-sourcing it but it never changed. Turns out it was loading from a backup~ of the same file.
This post is best described as a technology demonstration; it melds together web servers, plugins, WebAssembly, Go, Rust and ABIs. Here's what it shows:
Users of mature C libraries conventionally get to choose how memory is allocated — that is, when it cannot be avoided entirely . The C standard never laid down a convention — perhaps for the better — so each library re-invents an allocator interface. Not all are created equal, and most repeat a few fundamental…
Here's a small thought experiment that explores an alternative approach to ranking posts on HackerNews.
Mathematical insights create a more intuitive UI for Bézier curves.
In the demoscene, there's never a boundary that can't be pushed. My recent 4k demo "Boo!" ( YouTube ), released at X 2023, is a humble attempt to contribute to this ongoing evolution. In particular, it pioneers a new way of computing lines.
Someone asked if I could write about the rise of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) and what I think that means for the future of people, t...
To frugally furnish a codebase, imitate Ikea.
Twenty years... a significant chunk of a human's adult life; while so many things in my life have changed since May 2003, the blog has remained a constant companion. This milestone inspired me to do some archaeology using the amazing Wayback Machine . It didn't have the very first post, but I dug up one from just a…
An occasional blog about OpenPGP keyservers and related issues
Some programming languages like Java or Scala offer more than one way to express a concept of “lack of value”. Traditionally, a special null value is used to...
I've been floating ways to simplify the memory management story in Rust around the core team lately. Memory management is a contentious topic, since we've worked hard to get to the current state of things, and with the push toward stability lately, there is a (quite reasonable!) resistance to any changes at this…
Personal website of Phil Booth
This post was inspired by the tool jrnl which has been mentioned on hacker news.
I recently pondered how I'd answer [Peter Thiel's](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1478492-what-important-truth-do-very-few-people-agree-with-you) interview question if my answer had to relate to software:
