1051
Enhancing your MIDI devices with Perl
This post also appeared on perl.com.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,260 posts.
1052
Leeks and Leaks
On the completely impossible situation of blocking the Tor .onion TLD to avoid leaks, but at the same time not block it to make users able to do what they want. dot-onion leaks The onion TLD is a Tor specific domain that does not mean much to the world outside of Tor. If you try … Continue reading Leeks and leaks →
1053
Dissecting "Tiny Clouds" shadertoy (2017)
There is an amazing shadertoy called “Tiny Clouds” by stubbe (twitter: @Stubbesaurus) which flies you through nearly photorealistic clouds in only 10 lines of code / 280 characters (2 o…
1054
Cottagecore Programmers
Every programmer I know has at some point longingly expressed how “[they] want to work with [their] hands”. Some say they wish they were a carpenter, some want to be in the fields on a farm, some want to raise chickens, or milk cows. It is however inevitable that I either hear someone say it or agree with it at some…
1055
The principles of database design, or, the Truth is out there
Every software project needs to represent the reality of the business he is embedded in. The way we can represent reality as limited rational beings is through propositions, i.e, declarative statements that affirm or deny something about reality. When a collection of such propositions is stored in a computer system…
1056
Asyncio: A library with too many sharp corners
An explanation of some major issues with asyncio.
1057
You should write "without bugs"
Why and how you should write "without bugs"
1058
How To Build A Smartwatch: Software
PebbleOS, mobile app, SDK improvements and more!
1059
Tabular Programming: A New Paradigm for Expressive Computing
I've been exploring the m8 Dirtywave tracker for a few months now, and it's been a fascinating experience. If you're not familiar with it, the m8 is a portable music sequencer built on the Teensy platform that combines a minimal 8-button interface with a powerful tabular workflow. What makes it special isn't just its…
1060
Why is calling my asm function from Rust slower than calling it from C?
This is a follow-up to making the rav1d video decoder 1% faster, where we compared profiler snapshots of rav1d (the Rust implementation) and dav1d (the C …
1061
Adventures in Symbolic Algebra with Model Context Protocol
Personal blog of Stephen Diehl - Software engineer writing about technology, programming, and the future
1062
Quirks of Common Lisp Types
Humans have a tendency toward binary thinking (pardon the pun). If it's not A, it's B. Perhaps because Lisps have REPLs, they are often thought of from the outside as being dynamic, interpreted languages. Our years of Python have taught us that such languages don't really have strong typing - it's all a wild guess…
1063
Procedural Island Generation (III)
Adding multi-scale noise layers, mountain distance fields, and elevation blending to create detailed terrain from the paint map foundation.
1064
Writing a competitive BZip2 encoder in Ada from scratch in a few days – part 2
Note for subscribers: if you are interested in my Ada programming articles only, you can use this RSS feed link. Link to Part 3 here . As ...
1065
The Geometry Behind Normal Maps
Tangent space is often presented as a confusing block of shader math. This is a deep dive into what tangent vectors actually mean, how they emerge from UVs to bridge 2D and 3D space, and the geometry that makes normal mapping possible.
1066
A Rust shaped hole
Without writing a single line of Rust, why I feel it might be right
1067
Vibe Coding and the Future of Software Engineering
Vibe coding (or vibeware) is making rounds on X now. To the best of my knowledge Andrej Karpathy started the “meme” in this X entry . I find it well written and hilarious and it seems to have taken off.
1068
Do Files want to be Actors?
Is 1970s distributed systems theory finally meeting 2020s kernel development?
1069
The messy reality of SIMD (vector) functions
We’ve discussed SIMD and vectorization extensively on this blog, and it was only a matter of time before SIMD (or vector) functions came up. In this post, we explore what SIMD functions are, when they are useful, and how to declare and use them effectively. A SIMD function is a function that processes more than… Read
1070
Java Virtual Threads Ate My Memory: A Web Crawler's Tale of Speed vs. Memory
I built a simple web crawler using good old platform threads. It was just a multithreaded crawler, nothing fancy. But then, curiosity…
1071
Image Dithering: Eleven Algorithms and Source Code (2012)
Dithering is still a surprisingly applicable technique, not just for practical reasons (such as preparing a full-color image for output on a non-color printer), but for artistic reasons as well. Dithering also has applications in web design, where it is a useful technique for reducing images with high color counts to…
1072
ImapGoose
ImapGoose is a small program to keep local mailboxes in sync with an IMAP server. The wording “keep […] in sync” implies that it does so continuously, rather than a one-time sync. ImapGoose is designed as a daemon, monitoring both the IMAP server and the local filesystem, and immediately synchronising changes. When…
1073
A catalog of side effects
Optimizing compilers like to keep track of each IR instruction’s effects. An instruction’s effects vary wildly from having no effects at all, to writing a specific variable, to completely unknown (writing all state).
1074
Printf debugging is ok
A balanced take on the printf vs debugger debate: why there is no single right answer, and how to choose the right debugging approach for the situation at hand.
1075
One year with Next.js App Router and why we're moving on
A critique of React Server Components and Next.js 15.
1076
1077
Code Is Debt
I like to answer this frequent question by way of an example. An example of two companies. It goes something like this:
1078
The Temporal Dead Zone, or why the TypeScript codebase is full of var statements
Blog of Vincent Rolfs. Vincent is a freelance Software Engineer and IT-Consultant. He has more than ten years experience in developing complex applications on the web.
1079
What is Local first development
What is local-first software and why does it matter? This guide covers local-first architecture, offline-capable apps with automatic sync, data ownership, and how to build a local-first web app with Vue step by step.
1080
Emacs Solo: A Surprise System Crafters Live Demo
Rahul's Blog