91
15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram
How Microsoft continvoucly morged my Git branching diagram.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 14,529 posts.
92
Write Libraries, Not Frameworks
Normally when I write about something on here I take the time to fully think-out a point, make a case, address all the major sides of the issue that I can think of, etc.
93
Attention Is Off By One
Let’s fix these pesky Transformer outliers using Softmax One and QuietAttention.
94
I'm going back to writing code by hand
I vibe-coded a GPU-aware Kubernetes TUI for 7 months, archived it, and started over. Here's what AI gets wrong when projects grow complex.
95
GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub
(This post is an aspirational transcript of the talk I gave to the Data Terra Nemo conference in May 2015. If you’d like to watch the less eloquent version of the same talk that I actually gave, the video should be available soon!)
96
“Code” 2nd Edition
I am overjoyed to announce that the 2nd edition of my book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software will be published by Pearson on August 19, 2022. As you can see, the covers of the two editions are nearly identical except that the 2nd edition uses the “dark mode” option:
97
Next.js is infuriating
Hey, it's finally happened. I've decided to write a blog post. And if you're reading this, I've also finished one. I have wanted to do this for a long time,…
98
Data structures and algorithms I actually used while working at tech companies
Do you actually use data structures and algorithms on your day to day job? I've noticed a growing trend of people assuming algorithms are pointless questions that are asked by tech companies purely as an arbitrary measure. I hear more people complain about how all of this is a
99
Write Code Every Day
Last fall, work on my coding side projects came to a head: I wasn’t making adequate progress and I couldn’t find a way to get more done without sacrificing my ability to do effective work at Khan Academy .
100
101
Programming books you might want to consider reading
There are a lot of “12 CS books every programmer must read” lists floating around out there. That's nonsense. The field is too broad for almost any topic to be required reading for all programmers, and even if a topic is that important, people's learning preferences differ too much for any book on that topic to be the…
102
103
104
Xkcd 1425 (Tasks) turns ten years old today
One of the all-time great XKCDs. It's amazing that "check whether the photo is of a bird" has gone from PhD-level to trivially easy to solve (with a vision LLM, …
105
When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code
When hiring developers, there are many things we are looking for, but over the years I have found that raw coding ability is easily the most important quality to look for. I can quickly…
106
107
The Death of Microservice Madness in 2018
Dave Kerr, partner and Head of Engineering at QuantumBlack Labs, McKinsey & Company. Writing on software engineering and agentic AI.
108
20 lines of code that beat A/B testing every time
<img src="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/bandits/MAB-2.jpg"/> A/B testing is used far too often, for something that performs so badly. It is defective by design: Segment users into two groups. Show the A group the old, tried and true stuff. Show the B group the new whiz-bang design with the bigger…
109
What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023
Modern extension to classic 2003 article by Joel Spolsky
110
“Game Programming Patterns” is now finished
I’m here to help! Game Programming Patterns is a collection of patterns I found in games that make code cleaner, easier to understand, and faster .
111
SQLite is not a toy database
Here is why SQLite is a perfect tool for you - whether you are a developer, data analyst, or geek.
112
Using SVG as image placeholders
I’m passionate about image performance optimisation and making images load fast on the web. One of the most interesting areas of…
113
Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code
PR by Xuan-Son Nguyen for llama.cpp: This PR provides a big jump in speed for WASM by leveraging SIMD instructions for qX_K_q8_K and qX_0_q8_0 dot product functions. Surprisingly, 99% of …
114
Building LLMs from the Ground Up: A 3-Hour Coding Workshop
If your weekend plans include catching up on AI developments and understanding Large Language Models (LLMs), I've prepared a 1-hour presentation on the development cycle of LLMs, covering everything from architectural implementation to the finetuning stages.
115
I'm betting on HTML
AI Use Disclaimer: I wrote this post and then GPT-4 fixed my grammer and spelling
116
117
You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?
It might seem a reasonable question, but it makes some terrible assumptions: lines of code = effort lines of code = value all lines of c...
118
Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI
For eight years, I’ve wanted a high-quality set of devtools for working with SQLite. Given how important SQLite is to the industry1, I’ve long been puzzled that no one has invested in building a …
119
Shell script best practices, from a decade of scripting things
This article is about a few quick thumb rules I use when writing shell scripts that I’ve come to appreciate over the years. Very opinionated....
120
Good system design
I see a lot of bad system design advice. One classic is the LinkedIn-optimized “bet you never heard of queues” style of post, presumably aimed at people who are…