931
Designing a Language (2017)
Of course you want to design (and implement!) your own programming language! It’s fun. It’s creative. It’s empowering.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,747 posts.
932
Three ways formally verified code can go wrong in practice
"Correct" doesn't mean "correct" when correctly using "correct"
933
Coping with dumb LLMs using classic ML
Taking the output of many dumb LLM search relevance judges and feeding the output to a decision tree to improve precision
934
Structured outputs on the Claude Developer Platform
Structured outputs on the Claude Developer Platform guarantee API responses match your JSON schemas and tool definitions. Now in public beta for Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.1, this feature eliminates parsing errors and failed tool calls for production applications.
935
LoRA Without Regret
How LoRA matches full training performance more broadly than expected.
936
Optimistic Locking in B-Trees
CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools and tomorrow’s challenges.
937
Elliptical Python Programming
One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom. Here's a glimpse of the clarity it provides:
938
Shenmue (1999) reverse engineering reveals possible sun position oversight
So far, we’ve only really touched on some of the fundamentals of reverse engineering with one game example, but this time we’re looking at something a bit different. Shenmue (1999) is widely known for its pursuit of realism and has remained an influential series to this day, with its third game releasing in 2019. This…
939
Best Practices for Building Agentic AI Systems
Patterns that keep AI agent systems from falling apart in production: two-tier architecture, stateless design, orchestration, and lessons from UserJot.
940
Branchless UTF-8 Encoding
I know how to decode UTF-8 using bitmath and some LUTs (see https://github.com/skeeto/branchless-utf8 ), but if I want to to go from a codepoint to UTF-8, is there a way to do it without branches?
941
How Container Filesystem Works: Building a Docker-Like Container from Scratch
Learn how Linux containers are built from the ground up. Starting with the mount namespace and a root filesystem, see why PID, cgroup, UTS, and network namespaces naturally follow - and how this foundation makes concepts like bind mounts, volumes, and persistence in Docker or Kubernetes much easier to grasp.
942
Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
From the Zed Blog: We're moving Zed AI from prompt-based limits to token-based pricing.
943
The key points of "Working Effectively with Legacy Code"
This book is a reference. Here's my summary of its salient points so you understand why it's so reco
944
945
Why Does Integer Addition Approximate Float Multiplication?
Here is a rough approximation of float multiplication (source): float rough_float_multiply(float a, float b) { constexpr uint32_t bias = 0x3f76d000; return bit_cast<float>(bit_cast<uint32_…
946
Idempotency keys for exactly-once processing
In distributed systems, there’s a common understanding that it is not possible to guarantee exactly-once delivery of messages. What is possible though is exactly-once processing. By adding a unique …
947
Gleam v1.7
News post: Gleam v1.7.0 released
948
The illegible nature of software development talent
Here’s another blog post on gathering some common threads from reading recent posts. Today’s topic is about the unassuming nature of talented software engineers. The first thread was a …
949
Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit
Update (July 2026): I have started FFmpegKitNext, a source-only continuation of FFmpegKit’s build toolkit and wrapper library.
950
951
Why we need SIMD
tl/dr: it can deliver big performance speedups at modest area cost
952
GitHub Linux ARM64 hosted runners now available for free in public repositories
Now in public preview, Linux arm64 hosted runners are available for free in public repositories. Following the release of arm64 larger hosted runners in June, this offering now extends to…
953
954
955
Too Many Open Files
Recently I’ve been working on a pretty big rust project and to my surprise Icouldn’t get tests to work properly.
956
Trading with Claude, and writing your own MCP server
Ever wanted to check on your portfolio and trade some stocks directly with Claude? Well you’re in luck.
957
Strategies for Fast Lexers
Making compilation pipelines fast, starting with the tokenizer
958
I coded a Pascal compiler for transputer as a teen in 1993
History of the development of my Pascal compiler for transputer when I was age 13.
959
Building Modular Rails Applications: A Deep Dive into Rails Engines
A deep dive into Rails engines through Active Storage Dashboard: structure, isolation, routes, assets and testing. Learn to build modular Rails apps.
960
Working through 'Writing A C Compiler'
Some time ago I decided I wanted to create a c compiler for the Hack processor in the nand2tetris book. After several dead end attempts that I might describe later I found this book : Writing a C C…