Best of 2019

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2019. 1,357 posts.

Software Engineering
432

A fork() in the road

The received wisdom suggests that Unix’s unusual combination of fork() and exec() for process creation was an inspired design. In this paper, we argue that fork was a clever hack for machines and programs of the 1970s that has long outlived its usefulness and is now a liability. We catalog the ways in which fork […]

437

PostgreSQL at low level: stay curious

Yes, I know, it’s a long text, and it was my conscious decision to write it in this way. But fear not! Imagine that you read a book, take a look at the introduction and first few interesting sections, think about it and then find time to read further. I hope I’ve left enough references, so if you don’t get some ideas…

438

Awk by Example

Awk is a very nice language with a very strange name. In this first article of a three-part series, Daniel Robbins will quickly get your awk programming skills up to speed. As the series progresses, more advanced topics will be covered, culminating with an advanced real-world awk application demo.