1
I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time
Hello friends! :^) Let me tell you a story…
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,020 posts.
2
A half-hour to learn Rust
In order to increase fluency in a programming language, one has to read a lot of it. But how can you read a lot of it if you don’t know what it means? In this article, instead of focusing on one or...
3
Architecture.md
If you maintain an open-source project in the range of 10k-200k lines of code, I strongly encourage you to add an ARCHITECTURE document next to README and CONTRIBUTING. Before going into the details of why and how, I want to emphasize that this is not another docs are good, write more docs advice. I am pretty sloppy…
4
The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
As grandiose as the title of this article might sound, I should clarify we’re talking about a low-stress, one-person company that I run from my flat here in Germany.
5
Ditherpunk: The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering
I always loved the visual aesthetic of dithering but never knew how it’s done. So I did some research. This article may contain traces of nostalgia and none of Lena.
6
Modern Javascript: Everything you missed over the last 10 years (2020)
JavaScript has come a long way since I knew it as the “D” in DHTML. For anyone like me, who’s been reluctant to use the latest syntax that could require polyfills or a transpiler, I’ve written this cheatsheet to get you caught up on all the goodness that’s widely supported in modern browsers.
7
Don't start with microservices – monoliths are your friend
I’ve been having this thought on the back of my mind for a long time to write about why it’s often a bad idea to start with microservices for a brand new project.
8
A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python
Musings of a Computer Scientist.
9
Software engineering topics I changed my mind on
At some point, I realized I would've argued the exact opposite position on a lot of topics just a few years ago.
10
The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML
I've told this story at conferences - but due to the general situation I thought I'd retell it here. A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singularly unlovely places. The walls are brightened up with posters offering helpful services for people fleeing domestic…
11
QOI: Lossless Image Compression in O(n) Time
Introducing QOI — the Quite OK Image Format . It losslessly compresses RGB and RGBA images to a similar size of PNG, while offering a 20x-50x speedup in compression and 3x-4x speedup in decompression. All single-threaded, no SIMD. It's also stupidly simple .
12
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.
13
From Node to Ruby on Rails
I learned to code in the Javascript stack [1] and am building a Javascript based product [2]. I never questioned this stack: many companies default to it, JS everywhere seems good, and the community is big. But for my new side project I decided to try Rails because despite some...
14
New in Git: switch and restore
To my surprise, I recently found out about 2 new additions to the list of high-level commands: git restore and git switch
15
Npm Audit: broken by design?
Found 99 vulnerabilities (84 moderately irrelevant, 15 highly irrelevant)
16
An oral history of Bank Python
The strange world of Python, as used by big investment banks
17
Ideal Monitor Rotation for Programmers
How to be a pro programmer
18
19
Monolith First (2015)
Going directly to a microservices architecture is risky, so consider building a monolithic system first. Split to microservices when, and if, you need it.
20
Computer Graphics from Scratch
Behind the beautiful imagery of the latest animated movie and the realistic environments of popular videogames lie some mysterious algorithms. Computer Graphics from Scratch aims to demystify these algorithms and shows you that computer graphics can be surprisingly simple.
21
Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation (2019)
Every ops team has some manual procedures that they haven’t gotten around to automating yet. Toil can never be totally eliminated. Very often, the biggest toil center for a team at a growing …
22
Software effort estimation is mostly fake research
Effort estimation is an important component of any project, software or otherwise. While effort estimation is something that everybody in industry is involved with on a regular basis, it is a niche topic in software engineering research. The problem is researcher attitude (e.g., they are unwilling to venture into the…
23
24
Git undo: We can do better
Update for future readers: Are you looking for a way to undo something with Git? The git undo command won’t help with your current issue (it needs to be inst...
25
Neovim 0.5 is overpowering
Home page and blog of David Zhang (@crispgm), a minimalist programmer, photographer, and lifehacker.
26
Why I rewrote my Rust keyboard firmware in Zig: consistency, mastery, and fun
I’ve spent the last year building keyboards , which has included writing firmware for a variety custom circuit boards.
27
It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code (2020)
It may not be possible for us to ever reach empirical definitions of "good code" or "clean code", which means that any one person's opinions about another person's opinions about "clean code" are necessarily highly subjective. I cannot review Robert C. Martin's 2008 book Clean Co...
28
29
Lesser-known Postgres features
Features you already have but may not know about!
30
Use console.log() like a pro (2020)
What console.log() does, where to find console logs in the browser and Node.js, with examples, plus console methods like table(), group() and time().