Best of 2025

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2025. 212 posts.

Math & Algorithms
106

My favourite small hash table

I'm the kind of person who thinks about the design and implementation of hash tables. One design which I find particularly cute, and I think deserves a bit more publicity, is Robin Hood open-addressing with linear probing and power-of-two table size. If you're not familiar with hash table terminology, that might look…

114

Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles

I can't remember where I first saw them, but ever since, I have been unable to forget them: abelian sandpiles. I'm far from the only one . They're remarkably simple, yet produce lovely symmetric patterns. I loved them so much that I adorned the title banner of this blog with an animation of an abelian sandpile. But…

119

Sorting algorithms with CUDA

Building on my previous post on sorting algorithms, I implemented the same algorithms using CUDA to explore performance improvements through parallel computing. The goal is to see how we can leverage the power of parallel computing to speed up our sorting algorithms. I went for a NVIDIA recruiting event some days ago…