1591
Missile defense is NP-complete
Exploring the Weapon-Target Assignment problem: how missile defense connects to NP-completeness, SSPK probability calculations, and how saturation attacks exploit computational limits.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 14,532 posts.
1592
HTML Form Validation is underused
HTML Forms have powerful validation mechanisms, but they are heavily underused. In fact, not many people even know much about them. Is this because of some flaw in their design? Let’s explore.
1593
Why mmap is faster than system calls (2019)
When I ask my colleagues why mmap is faster than system calls, the answer is inevitably “system call overhead”: the cost of crossing the…
1594
Dynamic type systems are not inherently more open
Internet debates about typing disciplines continue to be plagued by a pervasive myth that dynamic type systems are inherently better at modeling “open world” domains. The argument usually goes like this: the goal of static typing is to pin everything down as much as possible, but in the real world, that just isn’t…
1595
The Impact Github is Having on Your Software Career
Update 2019: This article got 183 comments on Reddit, and 237 comments on Hacker News. Many commenters said it couldn’t be done — they…
1596
1597
Building Bluesky comments for my blog
I hate disqus too much.
1598
A few words on Doug Engelbart
Doug Engelbart died today. His work has always been very difficult for writers to interpret and explain.
1599
As much Stack Overflow as possible in 4096 bytes
Fitting as much Stack Overflow as possible into 4096 bytes
1600
Terraform should have remained stateless
For major providers, Terraform does not really need state. My proposal: add a ’none’ backend that uses the provider APIs as state. Here’s how.
1601
Writing secure Go code
Security testing starts with understanding vulnerabilities. The CVE website lists known software flaws. The OWASP Top Ten highlights common weaknesses. With this knowledge, we can improve our Go development. This article shows how to put in place robust practices. They are fuzz inputs, verify dependencies, and use…
1602
Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust
I announce Xee, the implementation of XPath and XSLT in Rust that I've been working on for the last two years.
1603
Calculus with Julia
This is a set of notes for learning calculus using the Julia language. Julia is an open-source programming language with an easy to learn syntax that is well suited for this task.
1604
You Have to Feel It
You see a series of checkboxes checked. Schedules met. Requirements satisfied. Demos delivered. It's a good day. Good job, you, good job! A promotion is in sight.
1605
The Case Against PGVector
The real limitations of pgvector in production: index choice between IVFFlat and HNSW, why real-time search is hard, pre- vs post-filtering pain, how performance degrades at scale, and when a dedicated vector database is the better call.
1606
Porting my 1993 Amiga game to Godot, with an LLM reading the 68000 assembly
Babylonian Twins is an Amiga platformer I built in Baghdad in 1993, in 68000 assembly. This summer an LLM ported it to Godot, and this is what I found when I read back through what it did. The original disks are now free on itch.io.
1607
The Story Behind “100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them”
The Story Behind 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
1608
Building a full-text search engine in 150 lines of Python code
Full-text search is everywhere. From finding a book on Scribd, a movie on Netflix, toilet paper on Amazon, or anything else on the web through Google (like [how to do your job as a software engineer](https://localghost.dev/2019/09/everything-i-googled-in-a-week-as-a-professional-software-engineer/)), you've searched…
1609
A Staff Engineer's Guide to Inventing Work
A how-to manual for engineer-led discovery in software platforms
1610
A Practical Guide to SSH Tunnels: Local and Remote Port Forwarding
SSH port forwarding explained in a clean and visual way. How to use local and remote port forwarding. What sshd settings may need to be adjusted. How to memorize the right flags.
1611
Abusing Go's Infrastructure
I apologize if this information is already known, but I couldn’t find any references about it and I wanted to understand what was going on and share with you because I think there is some value doing it. In case this wasn’t known, I apologize to the Go team for not talking to them first and jumping the full disclosure…
1612
Exercises in Programming Style
In the book club at work, we recently finished reading Exercises in Programming Style by Cristina Videira Lopes. The book consists of a simple program implemented in 33 different programming styles…
1613
How I implemented my own crypto
Despite advice to the contrary, I have implemented my own crypto for serious use. Here's how.
1614
I Like Makefiles
Fancy new build tools come and go, but I think I will stick with using makefiles to orchestrate everyday tasks in my projects.
1615
You've just inherited a legacy C++ codebase, now what?
Discussions: Hacker News , Lobster.rs , /r/programming . I've got great suggestions from the comments, see the addendum at the end!
1616
Dear sir, you have built a compiler (2022)
I am afraid to inform you that you have built a compiler. I know you wanted a “simple prototype” that would just add that one feature to your programming model. You said that “SSA is an overkill” and “it’s just way too much infrastructure to maintain for a simple task” and yet, six months later, you have pile of…
1617
Finding a new software developer job
For the first time ever, I was laid off, and had to find a new software developer job. I managed to find a new one, but it took longer than I thought, and it was a lot of work. I was in contact wit…
1618
My least favorite Rust type
Idx is typically an integral type, but you can make a Range of anything, which will become important later. Here’s a range of Unit:
1619
How I operated as a staff engineer at Heroku
I was incredibly lucky to spend 5 amazing years at Heroku. By the end of my time, I was operating in a Staff capacity, although I’m honestly completely uncle...
1620
I Wrote My Fastest Hashtable
I had to get there eventually. I had a blog post called “I Wrote a Fast Hashtable” and another blog post called “I Wrote a Faster Hashtable.” Now I finally wrote the fastest…