Best of 2020

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2020. 1,508 posts.

Software Engineering
906

One-pass Compiler

A one-pass compiler emits assembly (or binary code) right during parsing, without creating an intermediate representation, such as an AST. This is a rare technique that was used back in the days when computer memory was scarce. This limited both the language features that were possible and the quality of the produced…

930

J Notation as a Tool of Thought

Kenneth Iverson’s 1964 language, APL, won him the Turing Award. His award lecture, Notation as a Tool of Thought, argued that better notations would lead people to deeper insights about mathematics. He provided a number of examples ranging across linear algebra, arithmetic, probability, and logic. Unfortunately, most…