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I'm going back to writing code by hand
I vibe-coded a GPU-aware Kubernetes TUI for 7 months, archived it, and started over. Here's what AI gets wrong when projects grow complex.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 21,809 posts.
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GitTorrent: A Decentralized GitHub
(This post is an aspirational transcript of the talk I gave to the Data Terra Nemo conference in May 2015. If you’d like to watch the less eloquent version of the same talk that I actually gave, the video should be available soon!)
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AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms
New AI agent evolves algorithms for math and practical applications in computing by combining the creativity of large language models with automated evaluators
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“Code” 2nd Edition
I am overjoyed to announce that the 2nd edition of my book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software will be published by Pearson on August 19, 2022. As you can see, the covers of the two editions are nearly identical except that the 2nd edition uses the “dark mode” option:
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Next.js is infuriating
Hey, it's finally happened. I've decided to write a blog post. And if you're reading this, I've also finished one. I have wanted to do this for a long time,…
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Data structures and algorithms I actually used while working at tech companies
Do you actually use data structures and algorithms on your day to day job? I've noticed a growing trend of people assuming algorithms are pointless questions that are asked by tech companies purely as an arbitrary measure. I hear more people complain about how all of this is a
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Write Code Every Day
Last fall, work on my coding side projects came to a head: I wasn’t making adequate progress and I couldn’t find a way to get more done without sacrificing my ability to do effective work at Khan Academy .
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My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank's website
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
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Programming books you might want to consider reading
There are a lot of “12 CS books every programmer must read” lists floating around out there. That's nonsense. The field is too broad for almost any topic to be required reading for all programmers, and even if a topic is that important, people's learning preferences differ too much for any book on that topic to be the…
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Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace
Phorion has detected a backdoor in the official Claude Code for VS Code extension bundle on the Cursor Marketplace that drops a persistent SSH backdoor across macOS, Linux, and Windows. This write-up …
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Xkcd 1425 (Tasks) turns ten years old today
One of the all-time great XKCDs. It's amazing that "check whether the photo is of a bird" has gone from PhD-level to trivially easy to solve (with a vision LLM, …
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Codex for almost everything
The updated Codex app for macOS and Windows adds computer use, in-app browsing, image generation, memory, and plugins to accelerate developer workflows.
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When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code
When hiring developers, there are many things we are looking for, but over the years I have found that raw coding ability is easily the most important quality to look for. I can quickly…
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Qwen3.6-27B: Flagship-Level Coding in a 27B Dense Model
Qwen offers comprehensive functionality spanning chatbot, image and video understanding, image generation, document processing, web search integration, tool utilization, and artifacts.
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The Death of Microservice Madness in 2018
Dave Kerr, partner and Head of Engineering at QuantumBlack Labs, McKinsey & Company. Writing on software engineering and agentic AI.
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Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language
From Elixir v1.20, every program is now gradually type checked in search for verified bugs and typing violations.
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20 lines of code that beat A/B testing every time
<img src="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/bandits/MAB-2.jpg"/> A/B testing is used far too often, for something that performs so badly. It is defective by design: Segment users into two groups. Show the A group the old, tried and true stuff. Show the B group the new whiz-bang design with the bigger…
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What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023
Modern extension to classic 2003 article by Joel Spolsky
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“Game Programming Patterns” is now finished
I’m here to help! Game Programming Patterns is a collection of patterns I found in games that make code cleaner, easier to understand, and faster .
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SQLite is not a toy database
Here is why SQLite is a perfect tool for you - whether you are a developer, data analyst, or geek.
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Using SVG as image placeholders
I’m passionate about image performance optimisation and making images load fast on the web. One of the most interesting areas of…
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Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code
PR by Xuan-Son Nguyen for llama.cpp: This PR provides a big jump in speed for WASM by leveraging SIMD instructions for qX_K_q8_K and qX_0_q8_0 dot product functions. Surprisingly, 99% of …