1291
Instrumenting Python GIL with eBPF
Learn how to measure the impact of Python GIL contention on application latency using eBPF, with real workload examples.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,535 posts.
1292
Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Linker Script (2021)
Low level software usually has lots of .cc or .rs files. Even lower-level software, like your cryptography library, probably has .S containing assembly, my least favorite language for code review.
1293
How user groups made software reuse a reality
Before the widespread existence of software repositories like CPAN, NPM, and PyPI, developers seeking to reuse an existing algorithm or library of routines would either check books or journals for code, or, they just might post a classified ad:
1294
Defining Statistical Models in Jax?
This is Bob. And I’d like to know the best way for us to code a bunch of models in JAX to use to evaluate parallel algorithms including normalizing flows. I’m going to dump out my current thinking, but I’m really hoping to get feedback from experts on the best way to do this without starting a flame war in the…
1295
Machine Learning Is Still Too Hard for Software Engineers
Machine Learning has made huge strides in the last few decades, but it remains largely inaccessible to the average developer. This post examines some of the reasons why.
1296
What factors explain the nature of software?
I sometimes find myself asked to give advice on how organisations should go about creating software, but often my advice doesn’t gel with those who sought it. Sometimes that’s because only one answer was ever considered acceptable; sometimes I am ignorant of important wider context and my answer is unworthy of…
1297
Parsing: The Solved Problem That Isn't (2011)
Updated (2014-10-24): If you find this article interesting, you may be interested in the follow-up article on an editor for composed programs .
1298
Crystal 1.11.0 Is Released
We are announcing a new Crystal release with several new features and bug fixes.
1299
The problem with invariants is that they change over time
Cliff L. Biffle blogged a great write-up of a debugging odyssey at Oxide with the title Who killed the network switch? Here’s the bit that jumped out at me: At the time that code was written…
1300
Picking Glibc Versions at Runtime
Using a glibc version that is different from the system-provided one shouldn't require the use of containers, as I recently heard someone claim. Let's take a look at how dynamic linking works and what the options are.
1301
Building a USB to Mac ADB keyboard adapter
Write-only blogging
1302
Designing a Pure Python Web Framework
A deep dive into how Reflex works under the hood—from reactive state management to compilation of Python components into React.
1303
Not all graphs are trees
It's pretty easy to imagine how to represent relational algebra expressions as a tree—they are already structurally rooted trees where each operator has its...
1304
Implementing a Tiny CPU Rasterizer
This is a tutorial series on implementing a basic CPU rasterization engine in C++ from scratch. No GPU involved, just drawing pixels with our bare hands, emulating what the GPU usually does for us.
1305
A new home for Python-build-standalone
Astral is taking stewardship of python-build-standalone, Gregory Szorc's foundational project for installing portable Python distributions.
1306
Fundamentals of Radiance Cascades
A deep-dive into the fundamental concepts/ideas behind Radiance Cascades.
1307
Re-fixing Servo's event-loop
A follow-up on a previous story, in which we identify another problem, and perhaps confirm a theory through a theorem.
1308
What do you visualize while programming?
Thinking about thinking when coding, and the differences in what we see in our minds eye
1309
1310
Algorithmic fitting of Japanese candy
Introduction to bin packing through a simple example of fitting boxes of candy inside a parcel.
1311
Let futures be futures
In the early-to-mid 2010s, there was a renaissance in languages exploring new ways of doing concurrency. In the midst of this renaissance, one abstraction for achieving concurrent operations that was developed was the “future” or “promise” abstraction, which represented a unit of work that will maybe eventually…
1312
Running PHP fast at the edge with WebAssembly
PHP currently powers [~75% of the websites](<https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php>) on the internet. It may not be the “sexy boi” of programm...
1313
Are We PEP740 Yet?
PEP 740 is a Python standard for defining cryptographically verifiable attestations hosted by indices like PyPI.
1314
The weird of function-local types in Rust
Next-gen compile-time-checked builder generator, named function's arguments, and more!
1315
Using Drop for safety in Rust
A deep dive into Rust’s vec::Drain and its Drop implementation as an example of how ownership prevents subtle bugs—memory and otherwise!
1316
Nim on a Real-Time Operating System: Apache NuttX RTOS and Ox64 BL808 SBC
Let's blink an LED on Pine64 Ox64 BL808 64-bit RISC-V Single-Board Computer... With Nim Programming Language and Apache NuttX Real-Time Operating System
1317
Linear transformers are faster after all
Our mission is to train a neural network to model all human output.
1318
Bit-banging a BASIC Birthday
I spent this summer building a new app, for a machine that hasn’t been on the market since 1980 and wasn’t built to support graphics, sound, connectivity or even lowercase letters, sold by a company that went bankrupt a decade ago, tailor-made for an audience of one: my dad, who celebrated his 70th birthday this past…
1319
Compiler Explorer
Or the 'Matt Godbolt shows us some compiler magic' edition!
1320
X is justifiably slow (2022)
I regularly hear or read statements like this: “X is slow but this is to be expected because it needs to do a lot of work”. It can be said about an application or a component in a larger system, and can refer to other resources that aren’t time. I often find these profoundly unhelpful as they depend much more on the…