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Software Engineering

The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 14,540 posts.

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8193

How to allocate memory

Many programmers use malloc() and free() and pay no more mind to "allocating memory", but I often find 2-20× speed improvements by rethinking memory usage, so it is something I usually want to examine when joining a distressed project.

8199

QOA, the Quite OK Audio Format

Audio formats typically fall into one of three categories: “lossless” , “complicated” or “bad” . After developing a simple image format last year, I tried to come up with an audio format that fits neither of these categories.

8200

Crates.io phishing attempt

Earlier this week, an npm supply chain attack. It’s turn for crates.io, the main public repository for Rust crates (packages). The phishing e-mail looks like this: And it leads to a GitHub login pa...

8204

How MOS 6502 illegal opcodes work

The original NMOS version of the MOS 6502, used in computers like the Commodore 64, the Apple II and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), is well-known for its illegal opcodes: Out of 256 possible opcodes, 151 are defined by the architecture, but many of the remaining 105 undefined opcodes do…

8211

Covariance and Contravariance

Subtypes and supertypes are a common part of modern programming. Covariance and contravariance tell us where subtypes are accepted and where supertypes are accepted in place of the original type. This shows up frequently in most of the programming most of us do, but many developers are unaware of the concepts beyond a…

8217

Self-Enforcing Protocols

There are several ways two people can divide a piece of cake in half. One way is to find someone impartial to do it for them. This works, but it requires another person. Another way is for one person to divide the piece, and the other person to complain (to the police, a judge, or his parents) if he doesn’t think it’s…

8219

FogBugz goes dark

Today I got an email titled ‘Your Manuscript Account Balance’ which said: Your Manuscript account is now in arrears in the amount of $31.25. Use this link to specify a credit card for y…

8220

Ideas for Game Clones to Code (2012)

So you know a little bit about programming (perhaps you've read the free book, "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" , a free programming book for beginners whose author shamelessly plugs at every chance) but you want to get better at coding. You can't seem to find any open source projects that are at your…