1591
The Emacsification of Software
Everything looks like Emacs now: personal, complicated, idiosyncratic, and shrink-wrapped around exactly what you want it to do. Does shipping software even make sense in the long run?
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 21,812 posts.
1592
Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL
Just over a year ago now, I finally opened the bakery I’d been dreaming of for years. It’s been a big change in my life, from spending all my time sat in front of a computer, to spending most of it making actual stuff. And stuff that makes people happy, at that. It’s been a huge change, but I can’t think of a single…
1593
Software Testing Anti-patterns
There are several articles out there that talk about testing anti-patterns in the software development process. Most of them however deal with the low level details of the programming code, and almost always they focus on a specific technology or programming language.
1594
SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes
SectorC ( github ) is a C compiler written in x86-16 assembly that fits within the 512 byte boot sector of an x86 machine. It supports a subset of C that is large enough to write real and interesting programs. It is quite likely the smallest C compiler ever written.
1595
GPT-3.5 crashes when it thinks about useRalativeImagePath too much
Asking it to repeat "ponyuseRal ponyuseRal ponyuseRal pony" makes API requests fail
1596
Modern SAT solvers: fast, neat and underused
In the previous two parts we used a SAT solver as a black box that we feed input into, and it will (usually quickly) spit out an answer. In this part, we will look at how SAT solvers work and what heuristics and other tricks they employ in their quest for performance.
1597
A bug that taught me more about PyTorch than years of using it
a loss plateau that looked like my mistake turned out to be a PyTorch bug. tracking it down meant peeling back every layer of abstraction, from optimizer internals to GPU kernels.
1598
GitFlow considered harmful
GitFlow is the most popular Git branching model. After using it (and, more importantly, after seeing how it is used) for over a year now, I can say with confidence: I hate it. In the article, I try to explain why, and offer a better alternative.
1599
Implications of Rewriting a Browser Component in Rust
Since our first release in 2002, there have been 69 security bugs in Firefox’s style component. If we'd had a time machine and could have written this component in Rust from the start, 51% wouldn't have happened. That said, Rust is not foolproof. Developers still need to be aware of correctness bugs and data leakage…
1600
Date is out, Temporal is in
Temporal is the Date system we always wanted in JavaScript. It's extremely close to being available so Mat Marquis thought it would be a good idea to explain exactly what is better about this new JavaScript date system.
1601
Prompt engineering playbook for programmers
Turn AI coding assistants into more reliable development partners
1602
It's hard to write code for computers, but it's harder to write code for humans
How to build developer tools for happiness and productivity.
1603
The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models
We removed over 80% of Claude Code's system prompt for more advanced models. How to apply the lessons we learned to your own context engineering in Claude Code and with your own agents.
1604
Agentic Coding Is a Trap
Remaining vigilant about cognitive debt and atrophy.
1605
“Should you encrypt or compress first?”
Appcanary makes sure you never run vulnerable software on your servers. Like our blog? Subscribe to our newsletter or podcast . Browse the archive , or follow us on twitter , github or rss .
1606
1607
Booting Linux off of Google Drive
Competitiveness is a vice of mine. When I heard that a friend got Linux to boot off of NFS, I had to one-up her. I had to prove that I could create...
1608
To be a better programmer, write little proofs in your head
This is a brief write-up of a trick I learned that helps me write code faster and more accurately. I say "trick", but it's really something I started to do without noticing as I moved further into my career. When you're working on something difficult, sketch a
1609
Alt-F4 #65 – Factorio visualizer in Unreal Engine 5
Today we’ve got a very fun project to talk about: The FUE5 project, explained in this article by Hurricane. It’s Factorio, but 3D! Dreams do come true sometimes. It’s not quite a game, but more of a stunning re-imagining of its visuals. There’s lots of technical details on how this was achieved, so let’s jump in. What…
1610
1611
DuckDB 2.0.0 LTS “Cinnamon Teal”
The DuckDB team is happy to announce that today we're releasing DuckDB version 2.0.0 LTS, codenamed “Cinnamon Teal” (Spatula cyanoptera). This is our biggest feature release so far, and it ships a polished version of the Quack protocol, asynchronous I/O, a first-class VARIANT type, agent mode, triggers, an extensible…
1612
Writing that changed how I think about programming languages
Every so often I come across a paper, blog post, or (occasionally) video that completely changes how I think about a topic in programming languages and compilers. For some of these posts, I can’t even remember how I thought about the idea before reading it—it was that impactful.
1613
Solving NP-hard puzzles with the oldest trick in the book
KOITOTO hadir dengan mengutamakan kemudahan akses serta dukungan bagi pengguna yang membutuhkan informasi seputar layanan dan navigasi situs.
1614
My adventures getting Disney’s Moana island scene to render well with Pbrt
Adventures in rendering the Moana island scene with pbrt, collected together for your convenience.
1615
Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript
Shadow is a new novel browser engine written in JS!
1616
Rust in 2018: easier to use
Rust in 2018: it's way easier to use!
1617
1618
A one-line change decreased our build times by 99%
Urvashi Reddy | Software Engineer, Engineering Productivity Team Adam Berry | Tech Lead, Engineering Productivity Team Rui Li | Software…
1619
The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)
technology as if people mattered
1620
War story: the hardest bug I ever debugged
All of a sudden, without any ostensible cause, Google Docs was flooded with errors. How it took me 2 days and a coworker to solve the hardest bug I ever debugged.