1681
I designed my LED matrix PCB with code
This tutorial will walk you through building a 3x5 LED matrix controlled by a Raspberry Pi Pico using tscircuit.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 1,747 posts.
1682
Indices, not Pointers
There is a pattern I’ve learned while using Zig which I’ve never seen used in any other language. It’s an extremely simple trick which - when applied to a data structure - reduces memory usage, reduces memory allocations, speeds up accesses, makes freeing instantaneous, and generally makes everything much, much…
1683
A faster path to container images in Bazel
rules_img is a Bazel ruleset for building and publishing OCI images that feel native to Bazel by treating images as metadata first and moving bytes only at the edges.
1684
Head in the Zed Cloud
For the past five months I've been leading the efforts to rebuild Zed 's cloud infrastructure.
1685
Using the expand and contract pattern for schema changes
In this article, we introduce the expand and contract pattern to help migrate data and clients to a new schema.
1686
Extending That XOR Trick to Billions of Rows
Learn how to extend the classic XOR trick to find thousands of missing values using Invertible Bloom Filters
1687
I wrote a Pong game in a 512-byte boot sector
written by - Akshat Joshi Sometime back, I set myself a crazy constraint: Load only one thing at boot - A Pong game that fits in one floppy disk sector — 512 bytes. Why would I build this? I have played with Operating Systems and their workings by customizing them and tweaking their
1688
The C++ programmer and educator Rainer Grimm has passed away
Dear readers, we are extremely sad to inform you that Rainer passed away on October 6, 2025, surrounded by his closest family. After suffering from life-threatening pneumonia, Rainer decided against further life-sustaining measures that would have severely restricted his life. He passed away peacefully, accompanied by…
1689
SQLite transactions and virtual tables
In my previous post I introduced SQL virtual tables and how to use them in Go—registering modules per connection, defining schemas, and querying external sources as regular tables.
1690
QEMU Version 10.0.0 Released
We’d like to announce the availability of the QEMU 10.0.0 release. This release contains 2800+ commits from 211 authors.
1691
Why we still can't stop plagiarism in undergraduate computer science (2018)
Lessons on incentives and scaling from two years as a teaching assistant
1692
Falsehoods programmers believe about null pointers
Null pointers look simple on the surface, and that’s why they’re so dangerous. As compiler optimizations, intuitive but incorrect simplifications, and platform-specific quirks have piled on, the odds of making a wrong assumption have increased, leading to the proliferation of bugs and vulnerabilities. This article…
1693
Wrong ways to use the databases, when the pendulum swung too far
Disclaimer: This story took place when I was a junior developer for a previous employer ages ago. Some details might be fuzzy, and goes without saying this is entirely from my own POV so take everything here with humor and a grain of salt.
1694
Some thoughts on personal Git hosting
As part of my ongoing (and somewhat futile) efforts to ReDeCentralise, I'm looking at moving my personal projects away from GitHub. I already have accounts with GitLab and CodeBerg - but both of those sites are run by someone else. While they're lovely now, there's nothing stopping them becoming as slow or AI-infested…
1695
Why is hash(-1) == hash(-2) in Python?
While browsing Reddit the other day waiting for my code to compile, I ran across this question on r/Python: is hash(-1) == hash(-2) an easter egg? Wait, is that really true? $ python Python 3.9.6 (default, Jun 29 2021, 00:00:00) [GCC 11.1.1 20210531 (Red Hat 11.1.1-3)] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or…
1696
Fold-... and Monoids
A blog about computers, functional languages, Lisp, and Scheme.
1697
Design System Options for Rails
Choosing a design system and component library for Ruby on Rails applications
1698
Binfmtc – binfmt_misc C scripting interface
"I love C". "I enjoy writing in C". "I don't feel well when I have passed a day without coding a line of C". "My conversation with my wife simply doesn't flow without the C language". "I want to write everything in C, even the everyday scripting, but due to the steps required for writing make files and other things, I…
1699
Chat-tails: Throwback terminal chat, built on Tailscale
Brian Scott made an app that's safe, simple, and educational for kids to chat in, using Tailscale's tsnet and connectivity.
1700
Compiling C++ with the Clang API
This post describes how to compile a single C++ source file to an object file with the Clang API. Here is the code. It behaves like a simplified clang executable that handles -c and -S…
1701
Thrashing
I’ve invested in a new odometer to help my car go faster. Accountability is important, and as a driver I believe the most important thing I can do is set measurable, achievable and inspiring goals for the people pushing my car down the road.
1702
Minimal Boolean Formulas (2011)
28 . That's the minimum number of AND or OR operators you need in order to write any Boolean function of five variables. Alex Healy and I computed that in April 2010. Until then, I believe no one had ever known that little fact. This post describes how we computed it and how we almost got scooped by Knuth's Volume 4A…
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1704
Casey Muratori: I can always tell a good programmer in an interview
How to reliably understand if a candidate is a good programmer, inspired by Casey Muratori
1705
Me an' Algernon – grappling with (temporary) cognitive decline
Originally published May 20, 2015.
1706
COM Like a Bomb: Rust Outlook Add-in
One of legal tech's clichés is that "lawyers live in Word". This is demonstrably incorrect. I, for example, am a lawyer and in fact live in London, England…
1707
Abstraction, not syntax
Alternative configuration formats solve superficial problems. Configuration languages solve the deeper problem: the need for abstraction.
1708
Preparing for the .NET 10 GC
In .NET 9 we enabled DATAS by default. But .NET 9 is not an LTS release so for many people they will be getting DATAS for the first time…
1709
How/why to sweep async tasks under a Postgres table
I like slim and stupid servers, where each endpoint wraps a very dumb DB query. Dumb queries are fast. Fast queries make websites smooth and snappy. Keep those click/render loops sacred. Sweep complexity under a task table.
1710
The write last, read first rule
TigerBeetle is a financial transactions database built for correctness. Yet, building a correct system from correct components remains a challenge: