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Three ways formally verified code can go wrong in practice
"Correct" doesn't mean "correct" when correctly using "correct"
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,260 posts.
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Coping with dumb LLMs using classic ML
Taking the output of many dumb LLM search relevance judges and feeding the output to a decision tree to improve precision
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Elliptical Python Programming
One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom. Here's a glimpse of the clarity it provides:
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Shenmue (1999) reverse engineering reveals possible sun position oversight
So far, we’ve only really touched on some of the fundamentals of reverse engineering with one game example, but this time we’re looking at something a bit different. Shenmue (1999) is widely known for its pursuit of realism and has remained an influential series to this day, with its third game releasing in 2019. This…
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Branchless UTF-8 Encoding
I know how to decode UTF-8 using bitmath and some LUTs (see https://github.com/skeeto/branchless-utf8 ), but if I want to to go from a codepoint to UTF-8, is there a way to do it without branches?
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How Container Filesystem Works: Building a Docker-Like Container from Scratch
Learn how Linux containers are built from the ground up. Starting with the mount namespace and a root filesystem, see why PID, cgroup, UTS, and network namespaces naturally follow - and how this foundation makes concepts like bind mounts, volumes, and persistence in Docker or Kubernetes much easier to grasp.
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The key points of "Working Effectively with Legacy Code"
This book is a reference. Here's my summary of its salient points so you understand why it's so reco
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Why Does Integer Addition Approximate Float Multiplication?
Here is a rough approximation of float multiplication (source): float rough_float_multiply(float a, float b) { constexpr uint32_t bias = 0x3f76d000; return bit_cast<float>(bit_cast<uint32_…
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Idempotency keys for exactly-once processing
In distributed systems, there’s a common understanding that it is not possible to guarantee exactly-once delivery of messages. What is possible though is exactly-once processing. By adding a unique …
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The illegible nature of software development talent
Here’s another blog post on gathering some common threads from reading recent posts. Today’s topic is about the unassuming nature of talented software engineers. The first thread was a …
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Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit
Update (July 2026): I have started FFmpegKitNext, a source-only continuation of FFmpegKit’s build toolkit and wrapper library.
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Why we need SIMD
tl/dr: it can deliver big performance speedups at modest area cost
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Too Many Open Files
Recently I’ve been working on a pretty big rust project and to my surprise Icouldn’t get tests to work properly.
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Trading with Claude, and writing your own MCP server
Ever wanted to check on your portfolio and trade some stocks directly with Claude? Well you’re in luck.
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Strategies for Fast Lexers
Making compilation pipelines fast, starting with the tokenizer
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I coded a Pascal compiler for transputer as a teen in 1993
History of the development of my Pascal compiler for transputer when I was age 13.
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Building Modular Rails Applications: A Deep Dive into Rails Engines
A deep dive into Rails engines through Active Storage Dashboard: structure, isolation, routes, assets and testing. Learn to build modular Rails apps.
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Working through 'Writing A C Compiler'
Some time ago I decided I wanted to create a c compiler for the Hack processor in the nand2tetris book. After several dead end attempts that I might describe later I found this book : Writing a C C…
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Understanding the Go Scheduler
Go Scheduler
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Dotfiles feel too personal to share
I love dotfiles and I love sharing. But I have this weird feeling that sharing my dotfiles is too intimate and personal.
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Why Companies Don't Fix Bugs
A few years ago, a lone programmer named t0st did something extraordinary: he fixed an 8-year-old bug in GTA Online that had been driving players crazy. The bug? Painfully long load times, sometimes u
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Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
How many times are words, names or functions found in the Linux kernel source code? Browse an example or write your own comma-separated list to find out! You can use * for wildcards, foo|bar for sums, and a word is defined as \<[[:alnum:]_]+\> (ignoring case, considering accents).
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Dear GitHub: no YAML anchors, please
This was a good thing . YAML anchors in GitHub Actions are (1) redundant with existing functionality, (2) introduce a complication to the data model that makes CI/CD human and machine comprehension harder, and (3) are not even uniquely useful because GitHub has chosen not to support the one feature (merge keys) that…
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Pairing with Claude Code to rebuild my startup's website
Adventures using AI agents, especially Claude Code, and MCP Servers
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I got the highest score on ARC-AGI again swapping Python for English
Using Multi-Agent Collaboration with Evolutionary Test-Time Compute
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Building a Durable Execution Engine with SQLite
Lately, there has been a lot of excitement around Durable Execution (DE) engines. The basic idea of DE is to take (potentially long-running) multi-step workflows, such as processing a purchase order …