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Zero-downtime schema migrations in Postgres using views
Schema migrations are tricky, especially when planned downtime is not an option. Changes need to be carefully designed to stay backwards compatible so that…
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Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 21,834 posts.
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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…
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Implementing a web server in a single printf() call
A guy just forwarded a joke that most of us will already know Jeff Dean Facts (also here and here). Everytime I read that list, this part stands out: Jeff Dean once implemented a web server in a single printf() call. Other engineers added thousands of lines of explanatory comments but still don't u
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Rust Analyzer in 2018 and 2019
The rust-analyzer Project
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BoringTun, a Userspace WireGuard Implementation in Rust
Today we are happy to release the source code of a project we’ve been working on for the past few months. It is called BoringTun, and is a userspace implementation of the WireGuard® protocol written in Rust.
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Coming soon: Stripe CTF3, distributed systems edition
Online payment processing for internet businesses. Stripe is a suite of payment APIs that powers commerce for businesses of all sizes.
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Monte-Carlo Simulations
Monte Carlo simulations (or methods ) is the technique of applying randomness and the Law of large numbers to the solution of various scientific and engineering problems. One of its first documented uses was by Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann for nuclear weapon simulations after WWII [1] .
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Practical Garbage Collection - Part 1: Introduction
Introduction This is the first part of a series of blog posts I intend to write, whose aim will be to explain how garbage collection works in the real world (in particular, with the JVM). I will co…
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Using select(2) the right way
This started out as a Hacker News comment about a blog post about select being fundamentally broken After that the same author wrote why epoll is broken as well. I don’t know what problem author is trying to solve but let’s pick this one:
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Writing a technical book: from idea to print
Ever wanted to know what it's like to write a technical book? This post details my experience co-authoring an O'Reilly book with my colleagues Lak and Mike. Our book, Machine Learning Design Patterns, is available to order now and all royalties go to Girls Who Code.
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Exploring canvas drawing techniques
Canvas drawing techniques with live demos: pencils and smooth connections, fur and pen brushes, bezier curves, sprays, patterns, and neighbor-point webs.
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A conversation with Sussman on AI and asynchronous programming
A couple weeks ago I made it to the FSF's 30th anniversary party. It was a blast in many ways, and a good generator of many fond memories, but I won't go into depth of them here. One particularly exciting thing that happened for me though was I got to meet Gerald Sussman (of SICP !) The conversation has greatly…
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Microsoft open sources Salus software bill of materials (SBOM) generation tool
Salus is a general purpose, enterprise-proven, build-time SBOM generator. It works across platforms including Windows, Linux, and Mac, and uses the standard Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) format.
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Additive Blending on the Nintendo 64
Did you ever wonder why explosions and other effects looked so much cooler on the original PlayStation than they did on the Nintendo 64?
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Programmer Time Translation Table
An experienced project manager I used to work with claimed that he took the programmers’ time estimates, multiplied by pi and converted to the next time magnitude to get the true number. 1 day converts to 3.14 weeks. He had learned the hard way that programmers are bad at estimating times . To get a more precise…
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Systems design 2: What we hope we know
Someone asked if I could write about the rise of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) and what I think that means for the future of people, t...
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The Case Against Python 3
This document serves as a collection of reasons why beginners should avoid Python 3 as of November 22nd, 2016. I give two sets of reasons as I see them now. One for total beginners, and another for people who are more knowledgeable about programming. The first section attempts to explain the case against starting with…
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Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance
We are facing some interesting times at work as we are going to start changing our technology stack in the near future. Most of our Oracle ...
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Trying out this Go thing at Disqus
Disqus has a history of using one tool for the job and hammering through everything. Until now, that tool has been Python. This mentality has been extremely beneficial for us since we are a small team. Everyone is able to jump in to any piece of our stack with minimal effort.
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