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The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 14,544 posts.
So the other day I both defined Tcl procedures all by myself and used them interactively, and I liked it, to the point where it felt like some kind of local optimum. This entry is an attempt to cope with the trauma of liking Tcl, by means of rationalizing it. I'll first tell the story of my fascinating adventures, and…
I’ve been writing a pubsub listener for work recently and had this silly “shower thought”: the ideal queue should be empty. Why? If the queue is not empty, it means that whatever job is consuming from the queue is not keeping up with messages coming into it. Ok, then if queues are supposed to be empty, then what are…
a guide to interactive rebasing.
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.
An examination of the software that powers modern Climate simulations.
Let’s start the week with Lambda Expressions. The plan is to have a set of concise articles presenting core elements of lambda expressions. Today you can see how the syntax has evolved starting since C++11 and what are the latest changes in C++20. The Series This blog post is a part of the series on lambdas:
My long-time collaborator Richard Barnes [1] used to say that "in security, trust is a four letter word" , and yet the dominant experience of using any software-based system—which is, you know, pretty much anything electronic—is trusting the manufacturer. Not only is there no meaningful way to determine what software…
Real-Time Garbage Collection (RTGC) tests the limits of what we typically think is possible in production software. You might hear “Real-Time” and “Garbage Collection” together and think “If you truly need real-time guarantees, why would you use a garbage collected language?” or “How is real-time Garbage Collection…
This summer, I am again working on Rust full-time, and again I will work (amongst other things) on a “memory model” for Rust/MIR. However, before I can talk about the ideas I have for this ...
ernesernesto dev blog
Large language models (LLM) have been all the rage for quite some time now. Looking beyond the hype though, they have severe limitations: hallucinations, lack o
A critique of React Server Components and Next.js 15.
Or subtitle: Maybe distributed programming is no longer a programming problem? (For the obvious impaired: This is meant to be more thought provoking than an actual truth) Over the last decade we ha…
Rust is a systems language and therefore must give you raw access to memory. It does this (as in C++) via pointers. Pointers are one area w...
A blog about computer science education. Projects, resources, and ideas for teaching, learning, and using computer science. By a teacher for teachers.
People are debating this email from Linus Torvalds (maintainer of the Linux kernel). It has strong language, like: Some security people ...
Explore the fundamentals of the DICOM file format! This quick introduction covers the basics of DICOM's structure, its essential uses, and tips for easily navigating its complex and abstract components.
A while ago I read John Novaks great rant on how hard and annoying it can be to do something as simple as extending a cross-platform application with the simplest of GUIs. Or as he puts it:
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
There's been a bit of a brouhaha these last weeks as parts of the Internet suddenly woke up to the realization that most Single Page Apps are slow and overcomplicated, and — shock horror — it turns out that Facebook, the lovable scamps that brought us React and QAnon, have conducted themselves badly! Refreshingly…
DHH recently made a claim of Dependency Injection not being entirely virtuous, and got support from Tim Bray . While both make good point...
In this article we’ll look at how to implement the Elo rating system in code.
There is a misunderstanding about software engineering that AI is making increasingly visible: we tend to confuse writing code with building software.
I often work with clients who have large “data lakes” or big star schema style enterprise databases with fact and dimension tables as far as the eye can see. Invariably said clients end up with a substantial SQL codebase composed of hundreds of independent queries with lots of overlap between them. I want to be able…
Software rots. That is: Adapting mature software to new circumstances tends to take more time and effort than writing new software from scratch. Software people don't like to admit this, but open so…
When we see a world-class musician flawlessly play challenging music, it can be tempting to imagine that they were always able to do so. A moment’s thought makes it obvious that they must have had to spend huge amounts of time practising basic techniques in order to reach that level. What’s less obvious is that they…
