Best of 2013

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2013. 146 posts.

Programming Languages
40

JavaScript Isn't Scheme

It seems like I can’t spend five minutes on reddit these days without someone playing the JS-is-Scheme is card . I see everything from the innocuous, “JavaScript has a lot in common with Scheme”, all the way up to, “JavaScript is basically Scheme.” This is basically crazy. Or, at least it has a lot in common with…

48

ClojureScript 101

While none of the ideas in core.async are new, understanding how to solve problems with CSP is simply not as well documented as using plain callbacks or Promises . My previous posts have mostly explored fairly sophisticated uses of core.async , this post instead takes the form of a very basic tutorial on using…

54

On the Cleverness of Compilers

The “Sufficiently Clever Compiler” has become something of a trope in the Lisp community: the mythical beast that promises language and interface designers near-unlimited freedom, and leaves their output in a performance lurch by its non-appearance. A few years ago, I was young enough to join a research project to…