811
Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them
And JavaScript has killed them.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,001 posts.
812
813
814
Code vs. No-code
There was a conversation on Twitter this week that helped to clarify my thinking about something, and I wanted to share. There is a sort of tension between “code” and “no-code” (sometimes “low-code”) solutions. People who consider themselves software developers see people trying to use no-code solutions to do things…
815
Shared Libraries as Executables
Typically you either have an executable or a shared library, but can you have an executable shared library too?
816
The Changes for the 2nd Edition of “Code”
Whenever a 2nd edition of a book is published, people ask “I already have the 1st edition. Do I need to get the 2nd?” It’s a legitimate question and I’ve asked it myself. Reading a 2nd edition after the 1st is not trivial: It’s a commitment of both additional money and additional time.
817
How to Find and Stop Running Queries on PostgreSQL
Your PostgreSQL server is seizing up, with some naughty queries consuming too many resources or blocking others. Don’t panic! You can stop those problem queries and stabilize your system.
818
Dealing with APIs, JSON and databases in org-mode
A practical Org-mode workflow for calling APIs, working with JSON responses, and querying the resulting data with databases and executable blocks.
819
High-Throughput, Formal-Methods-Assisted Fuzzing for LLVM
Mutation-based fuzzing is based on the idea that new, bug-triggering inputs can often be created by randomly modifying existing, non-bug-triggering inputs. For example, if we wanted to find bugs in a PDF reader, we could grab a bunch of PDF files off the web, mutate them by flipping a few bits or something, and feed…
820
821
822
Git log is not a changelog
When you maintain a project, publishing new releases can quickly become a chore, so naturally one tries to automate it as much as possible.
823
Escaping strings faster with AVX-512
When programming, we often have to 'escape' strings. A standard way to do it is to insert the backslash character (\) before some characters such as the double quote. For example, the string my title is "La vie" becomes my title is \"La vie\" A simple routine in C++ to escape a string might look … Continue reading…
824
825
Dynamic types have the potential to be more than "no static types"
They have potential to be more than "no static types", but that hasn't happened.
826
From TypeScript to ReScript
Rewriting the Inhyped.com React frontend in ReScript brought a sound type system and easy JS interop, at the cost of a small community.
827
You wouldn't download a back end
How in the world do you pirate an API?
828
Understanding the Power of Lisp (2020)
Notable programmers describe understanding and coding in LISP as a semi-religious experience. What gives the language this power?
829
I wrote a Ruby extension in Zig
Just my website. Some Elixir, some Ruby, some more exotic languages and general thoughts on tech.
830
Assembly Nights
Over the last three months, I’ve developed an unusual little nighttime routine: after reading bedtime stories to the kids, I hop into bed and instead of reaching for a fiction book, I’m turning on my 14-year old Asus eeePC 701 (wikipedia.org) miniature laptop and writing x86 assembly language. This is turning out to…
831
Failing in Haskell
I’m a Haskell failure, don’t tell anyone! Recently I encountered some dubious error handling code. Not only was it failing, it was failing WRONG 1. This frus
832
Math on GitHub: Following Up
About six weeks ago, on May 19, 2022, GitHub released Math support on Markdown. At the time of the release, it received criticism for being ill-designed and buggy. I, too, wrote a blog post about it.
833
Using the mold linker for fun and 3x-8x link time speedups
A large C++ codebase meets a new linker: The good, the bad and the performance improvements <a class="more-link" href="https://www.productive-cpp.com/using-the-mold-linker-for-fun-and-3x-8x-link-time-speedups/">... Read More</a>
834
Tao of Node – Design, Architecture and Best Practices
One of the main benefits of JavaScript is that it runs both in the browser and the server. As an engineer you need to master a single language and your skills w
835
Worst practices are viral for the wrong reasons (2014)
Perverse incentives surrounding best practices
836
Visualizing Diffs: The Myers difference algorithm (2020)
In 1986, Eugene Myers published An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and Its Variations , which unified the problems of finding the longest common subsequence of two sequences (the LCS of "driftwood" and "artwork" is "two") and finding the shortest edit script for transforming one sequence into another. Myers showed that…
837
838
It's not Ruby that's slow, it's your database
Many people keep repeating that Ruby is slow. It is. But that doesn't matter, because your database is so much slower that it is the bottleneck. So, an alternative title would be "Ruby is slow, but that doesn't matter for you."
839
Resources to encourage children to learn to code
6 Interesting Resources to Encourage Your Child to Learn to Code
840
Norvig's Law (2002)
In July 1999, there was a news article stating that PC usage had doubled yet again, reaching penetration of 50% of homes. People were hailing this as yet another sign of the inevitable climb of technology, but I saw it as a warning sign that the glass was half empty, and coined the following: