1501
Abusing C to implement JSON parsing with struct methods
Json parsing in C using function pointers attached to a struct
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Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,747 posts.
1502
Evaluating LLMs playing text adventures
When we first set up the llm such that it could play text adventures , we noted that none of the models we tried to use with it were any good at it. We dreamed of a way to compare them, but all I could think of was setting a goal far into the game and seeing how long it takes them to get there. I just realised there’s…
1503
Fun with -fsanitize=undefined and Picolibc
Both GCC and Clang support the -fsanitize=undefined flag which instruments the generated code to detect places where the program wanders into parts of the C language specification which are either undefined or implementation defined. Many of these are also common programming errors. It would be great if there were…
1504
Writing a Self-Mutating x86_64 C Program (2013)
My little corner of the web for sharing wherever my interests take me.
1505
April Fools 2014: The *Real* Test Driven Development (2014)
Update: APRIL FOOLS! by Kaue Silveira Here at Google, we invest heavily in development productivity research. In fact, our TDD resea...
1506
Delimited continuations in lone Lisp
The lone lisp delimited continuations implementation journey.
1507
Optimizing Matrix Multiplication on RDNA3
Writing Super-Fast Matrix Multiplication with HIP, RGP, and ISA
1508
1509
Modeling the World in 280 Characters
An exploration of the mindset, methods, and motivations behind crafting tiny, expressive shaders that combine code, art, and constraint.
1510
All Lisp indentation schemes are ugly
Indentation styles are a hot topic in every language. So let's see how Lisps do indentation! Uuuuuuugh!
1511
Why I'm No Longer Talking to Architects About Microservices
I'm done talking about microservices: the term is confusing, discussions are abstract, and without organisational change, microservices are pointless
1512
Writing code is easy, reading it isn't
Writing code is easy. Once you have a solution in mind, and have mastered the syntax of your favorite programming language, writing code is easy. Having an LLM write entire functions for you? Even eas
1513
The Uselessness of "Fast" and "Slow" in Programming
Every field of human activity has its unique characteristics, and programming is no exception.
1514
Notebooks as reusable Python programs
Designing a Python notebook that blends the best parts of interactive computing with the sanity of code
1515
Pg_ClickHouse: A Postgres extension for querying ClickHouse
Today, we’re pleased to release pg_clickhouse, an Apache 2-licensed PostgreSQL extension to transparently execute analytics queries on ClickHouse directly from PostgreSQL.
1516
What Are Traces and Spans in OpenTelemetry?
Understand OpenTelemetry traces and spans with real code examples. Instrument Node.js/TypeScript apps for distributed tracing and faster debugging.
1517
Heroku Support for .NET 10
Deploy .NET 10 apps on Heroku with day-one support. Learn about the new LTS release , file-based apps , and SLNX solutions.
1518
Coalton Playground: Type-Safe Lisp in the Browser
I wanted to share a side project I’ve been tinkering with for a while and finally got around to shipping: Coalton Playground – basically a web-based REPL for Coalton, which is this inte…
1519
Context Engineering for Agents
Patterns for managing agent context.
1520
Xerox Alto Source Code (2014)
Depending on your age, your first computer might have been an Apple II, a Radio Shack TRS-80, an IBM PC, an Apple Macintosh, or another of the early personal computers. If you missed these early machines the first time around, perhaps you have seen them in the Personal Computer section of the Revolution exhibit at the…
1521
MCP on AWS Lambda with MCPEngine
A virtual feature store for the modern AI stack
1522
High-performance computing, with much less code
The “Exo 2” language allows programmers to write “schedules” that explicitly control how the compiler generates code. This allows performance engineers to transform simple programs into complex programs that do the same thing as the specification, but faster.
1523
Load-Store Conflicts
meshoptimizer implements several geometry compression algorithms that are designed to take advantage of redundancies common in mesh data and decompress quickly - targeting many gigabytes per second in decoding throughput. One of them, index decoder, has seen a significant and unexpected variance in performance across…
1524
Switch to Jujutsu Already: A Tutorial
As all developers, I’ve been using git since the dawn of time, since its commands were an inscrutable jumble of ill-fitting incantations, and it has remained this way until today. Needless to say, I just don’t get git. I never got it, even though I’ve read a bunch of stuff on how it represents things internally. I’ve…
1525
Ada and SPARK enter the automotive ISO-26262 market with Nvidia
AdaCore and NVIDIA have decided to publish this reference process freely as an open-source and evolving document, allowing the industry at large to adopt…
1526
A surprise with how '#!' handles its program argument in practice
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
1527
1,145 pull requests per day
There is a recent video of Patrick Collison at Stripe Sessions 2025 stating that in 2024 Stripe did on average 1,145 pull requests per day. Not just creating them, but actually finishing them; "fully shipped into production". All whilst having less than a minute of API unreliability for the
1528
Exploring Coroutines in PHP
Coroutines are functions that pause and resume with state, allowing flexible, bidirectional control flow in PHP.
1529
Parsing JSON in 500 lines of Rust
Finally sitting down to learn Rust and how to write parsers.
1530
The Joy of Mixing Custom Elements, Web Components, and Markdown
Custom Elements are basically Markdown for HTML