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The secret life of NaN
The floating point standard defines a special value called Not-a-Number (NaN) which is used to represent, well, values that aren’t numbers. Double precision ...
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 14,540 posts.
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Java Trap, 2010 Edition
As a member of the Apache Software Foundation , my views on open source tend to gravitate towards more liberal licenses, like the Apache License (v2.0) , BSD, or MIT licenses. I strongly believe in enabling companies to take open source software and do whatever they wish to do with it, placing as little restrictions…
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Extensible Software in the age of LLMs
Solid core + capability-based sandboxes + LLMs = Users with superpowers
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2FA on the command line
OTP: One-Time Password TOTP: Time-based One-time Password algorithm 2FA: Two-factor authentication There is no shortage of OTP 2FA apps availiable for your phone, such as Google Authenticator or Duo Mobile. These apps take an initial secret code, and create a TOTP anytime you need a 2FA code for login.… …
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Context engineering is sleeping on the humble hyperlink
The dream of hypermedia can come to fruition in a world where clients can not only parse, but navigate with intent.
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Is sorted using SIMD instructions
Recently, I came across a function that checks whether an array is sorted, i.e. if there is no element which would be greater than its successor. Below is a sample implementation:
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The RubyGems "Security Incident"
Ruby Central posted an extremely concerning “Incident Response Timeline” today, in which they make a number of exaggerated or purely misleading claims. Here’s my effort to set the record straight. First, and most importantly: I was a primary operator of RubyGems.org, securely and successfully, for over ten years. Ruby…
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Magic Numbers
1500 bytes is a bit out there as numbers go, or at least it seems that way if you touch computers for a living. It’s not a power of two or anywhere close, it’s suspiciously base-ten-round, and computers don’t care all that much about base ten, so how did we get here?
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The long arrow operator in C++
Dr Ivan Čukić -- author of the 'Functional Programming in C++' book, KDE developer and Free/Libre Software enthusiast.
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Will It Optimize? (2010)
See how well you know (or can anticipate) gcc's optimizer. For each question, the left box contains some code, while the right box contains code that purports to do the same thing, but that illustrates a particular optimization. Will gcc apply that optimization? Put another way, will the code on the left be as fast as…
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Shumway: a SWF interpreter entirely in JavaScript
Today, Mozilla Research publicly announced the Shumway project . Shumway is JS/HTML library which displays SWF (Flash) content entirely using open web technologies.
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The Emacs Calculator (2009)
Did you know that Emacs comes with a calculator ? Woop-dee-doo! Call the presses! Wow, a whole calculator! Sounds a bit lame, right?
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Both true and false: a Zen moment with C
I ran into a really fun bug at work yesterday, where I discovered that my C program was branching down logically inconsistent code paths. After drinking another cup of coffee and firing up GDB I realized that somehow, a boolean variable in my code was simultaneously testing as both true and not true.
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You Really Should Log Client-Side Errors
Karl Seguin's Blog - A mix of coding and creative writing
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Parallel tasks in Python: concurrent.futures
concurrent.futures is well suited to Embarrassingly Parallel tasks. You could write concurrent code with a simple for loop.
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Designing software for things that rot
Building an iOS fermentation tracker with HACCP-style decision trees for home charcuterie, salami curing, and fermented foods - food safety without internet strangers.
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Solving the Go Challenge 1 in Erlang
The first Go challenge is over. So by now, I can take my Erlang solution and write about how you would go around solving the challenge in…
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How to implement search-by-color when all you have is a good coffee
Hey there! Last week I started working on a rewrite of Shefa Products which is a wholesale merchandising e-commerce for Argentina.
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Fun and dystopia with AI-based code generation using GPT-J-6B
At the least, AI-generated code is much more readable than the average human’s.