20461
Undefined Behavior in C and C++ (2024)
In some ways, that's because C is a lower-level language, closer to assembly; it just gives you what the underlying machine gives you.
Topics /
Software Engineering
The most popular blog posts about software engineering on Hacker News. 21,845 posts.
20462
Admitting That Functional Programming Can Be Awkward (2007)
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
20463
Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)
This article is written with considerable snark–put on your flameproof suit if needed. I’m not actually a jerk when interviewing people, but I do get frustrated when candidates fail to do basic preparation. If you’re unsure about how to prepare for a programming interview, read on… I know this might come as a shock to…
20464
Myths about Hash Tables
A hash table is data structure that is used to search for exact matches to a search key. For searching, they work like this: Take a search key (example: the word “cat”) Hash the search …
20465
Objective-C's niche: why it survives in a world of alternatives
Objective-C remains an impediment for many programmers coming to the Mac or iPhone platforms — few programmers have ever experienced it before learning Cocoa, forcing two learning curves at once for new Cocoa developers. How did Apple end up with such a weird language? And for a company known to replace CPU…
20466
Why Rust helps even if you have to use a lot of `unsafe`
I semi-regularly hear developers who claim that using Rust would not gain them anything because they would have to use `unsafe`. But this is not true. Local reasoning matters.
20467
Interviewing programmers: coding test example explained
In Part 2 article I'll describe how I personally would write the code specified in Part 1. I'm not claiming this is in any sense objectively the best, and I'm certainly not suggesting it's the only.
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20469
I hate packaging my software for Linux
Nineteen distribution channels later: what it actually costs to give a terminal editor away for free on Linux, and why the next step is a static musl binary that updates itself.
20470
Qt signal is ten times slower than a virtual function
I defined a QT Object that contains an integer value and uses QT signal along with awl::Observable based on virtual functions to notify the subscribers when the value changes:
20471
Is XMPP any good? Also, let's write a client in Tcl, maybe
I still have my Nokia 5800 lying around. It runs Symbian. That platform is quite different from Android. For one thing the internal storage size is 81 MB - less than what your single android app takes up, even in RAM, and it works faster than modern smartphones - e.g. the SMS app opens instantaneously. Another…
20472
New integer types I’d like to see
(Most) C++ implementations provide at least 8, 16, 32, and 64-bit signed and unsigned integer types. There are annoying implicit conversions, discussions about undefined behavior on overflow (some think it’s too much UB, others think it’s not enough), but for the most part they do the job well. Newer languages like…
20473
Sylph: the programming language I want
Creating a programming language is apparently all the rage these days, and it’s got me thinking about what I would really like to see in one. I’m starting to suspect the things I want are either impossible or mutually incompatible, so I’d better write them down and let smarter people tell me why I can’t have…
20474
Why do C++ folks make things so complicated?
This morning Miroslav Bajtoš asked "Why do C++ folks make things so complicated?" in response to my article on regular expressions in C++. Other people asked similar questions yesterday. My response has two parts: Why I believe C++ libraries are often complicated. Why I don't think it has to be that way. Why would…
20475
20476
The Future Programming Manifesto
It’s time to reformulate the principles guiding my work. [Revised definition of complexity in response to misunderstandings]
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20478
20479
Why I think Haskell is the best general purpose language as of June 22 2019
Me and my close friends have been interested in starting a project together and I suggested we use Haskell. I do not think the suggestion was received well or perhaps in seriousness. I have a tendency to joke about almost everything and have put forward that we use many interesting but not practical languages in the…
20480
My gym forced a social media down my throat. So I reverse-engineered its app
Extracting my gym’s QR check-in from its Flutter app, with a rooted phone and a lot of ripgrep.
20481
20482
Gap Buffers Are Not Optimized for Multiple Cursors
Gap buffers are a common data structure for representing a text buffer in a text editor. Emacs famously uses gap buffers — long-standing proof that gap buffers are a perfectly sufficient way to represent a text buffer.
20483
20484
Why is F# code robust and reliable?
F# is not just for math and big data, it's a general purpose language that will greatly reduce the amount of bugs in your code.
20485
LLVM's New Versioning Scheme
Historically, LLVM's major releases always added "0.1" to the version number, producing major versions like 3.8, 3.9, and 4.0 (expected by March 2017). With our next release though, we're changing this.
20486
Measuring Software Complexity: What Metrics to Use?
Do we need to measure complexity? With what metrics? What benefits can it brings? This is the questions we'll answer in this article.
20487
Abstraction, intuition, and the “monad tutorial fallacy” (2009)
While working on an article for the Monad.Reader, I’ve had the opportunity to think about how people learn and gain intuition for abstraction, and the implications for pedagogy. The heart of …
20488
Monorepos and Forced Migrations
Monorepos and Forced Migrations By most metrics, Google is a great place to work. Top tier compensation, free food, and largely co-workers who want do...
20489
The Best and Worst Microcontroller SDKs
A community and blog for embedded software makers
20490
A Month of Terraform
I took Heroku for granted, and a month into setting up my own infra, I now know how much it bought me.