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Why is calling my asm function from Rust slower than calling it from C?
This is a follow-up to making the rav1d video decoder 1% faster, where we compared profiler snapshots of rav1d (the Rust implementation) and dav1d (the C …
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Adventures in Symbolic Algebra with Model Context Protocol
Personal blog of Stephen Diehl - Software engineer writing about technology, programming, and the future
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Quirks of Common Lisp Types
Humans have a tendency toward binary thinking (pardon the pun). If it's not A, it's B. Perhaps because Lisps have REPLs, they are often thought of from the outside as being dynamic, interpreted languages. Our years of Python have taught us that such languages don't really have strong typing - it's all a wild guess…
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Procedural Island Generation (III)
Adding multi-scale noise layers, mountain distance fields, and elevation blending to create detailed terrain from the paint map foundation.
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Writing a competitive BZip2 encoder in Ada from scratch in a few days – part 2
Note for subscribers: if you are interested in my Ada programming articles only, you can use this RSS feed link. Link to Part 3 here . As ...
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The Geometry Behind Normal Maps
Tangent space is often presented as a confusing block of shader math. This is a deep dive into what tangent vectors actually mean, how they emerge from UVs to bridge 2D and 3D space, and the geometry that makes normal mapping possible.
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A Rust shaped hole
Without writing a single line of Rust, why I feel it might be right
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Vibe Coding and the Future of Software Engineering
Vibe coding (or vibeware) is making rounds on X now. To the best of my knowledge Andrej Karpathy started the “meme” in this X entry . I find it well written and hilarious and it seems to have taken off.
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Do Files want to be Actors?
Is 1970s distributed systems theory finally meeting 2020s kernel development?
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The messy reality of SIMD (vector) functions
We’ve discussed SIMD and vectorization extensively on this blog, and it was only a matter of time before SIMD (or vector) functions came up. In this post, we explore what SIMD functions are, when they are useful, and how to declare and use them effectively. A SIMD function is a function that processes more than… Read
1481
CheerpJ 4.1: Java in the browser, now supporting Java 17 (preview)
The latest release of our state-of-the-art Java runtime that runs completely in the browser via WebAssembly, is now available. Supports up to Java 17.
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Java Virtual Threads Ate My Memory: A Web Crawler's Tale of Speed vs. Memory
I built a simple web crawler using good old platform threads. It was just a multithreaded crawler, nothing fancy. But then, curiosity…
1483
Image Dithering: Eleven Algorithms and Source Code (2012)
Dithering is still a surprisingly applicable technique, not just for practical reasons (such as preparing a full-color image for output on a non-color printer), but for artistic reasons as well. Dithering also has applications in web design, where it is a useful technique for reducing images with high color counts to…
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A kernel bug froze my machine: Debugging an async-profiler deadlock
How I investigated and worked around a kernel bug that caused async-profiler to freeze my machine whenever I tried to use a profiler.
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ImapGoose
ImapGoose is a small program to keep local mailboxes in sync with an IMAP server. The wording “keep […] in sync” implies that it does so continuously, rather than a one-time sync. ImapGoose is designed as a daemon, monitoring both the IMAP server and the local filesystem, and immediately synchronising changes. When…
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A catalog of side effects
Optimizing compilers like to keep track of each IR instruction’s effects. An instruction’s effects vary wildly from having no effects at all, to writing a specific variable, to completely unknown (writing all state).
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Context Engineering for AI Agents: Lessons
This post shares the local optima Manus arrived at through our own "SGD". If you're building your own AI agent, we hope these principles help you converge faster.
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Printf debugging is ok
A balanced take on the printf vs debugger debate: why there is no single right answer, and how to choose the right debugging approach for the situation at hand.
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One year with Next.js App Router and why we're moving on
A critique of React Server Components and Next.js 15.
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Code Is Debt
I like to answer this frequent question by way of an example. An example of two companies. It goes something like this:
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Performance hacks for faster Python code
Learn practical optimization hacks, from data structures to built-in modules, that boost speed, reduce overhead, and keep your Python code clean.
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The Temporal Dead Zone, or why the TypeScript codebase is full of var statements
Blog of Vincent Rolfs. Vincent is a freelance Software Engineer and IT-Consultant. He has more than ten years experience in developing complex applications on the web.
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What is Local first development
What is local-first software and why does it matter? This guide covers local-first architecture, offline-capable apps with automatic sync, data ownership, and how to build a local-first web app with Vue step by step.
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OpenTelemetry collector: What it is, when you need it, and when you don't
A practical, no-fluff guide to understanding the OpenTelemetry Collector - what it does, how it works, real architecture patterns (with and without it).
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A programmer-friendly I/O abstraction over io_uring and kqueue (2022)
Consider this tale of I/O and performance. We’ll start with blocking I/O, explore io_uring and kqueue, and take home an event loop very similar to some software you may find familiar.
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Emacs Solo: A Surprise System Crafters Live Demo
Rahul's Blog
1498
A critique of package managers
n.b. This is a written version of a dialogue from a YouTube video: 2 Language Creators vs 2 Idiots | The StandupPackage managers (for programming languages) are evil.11 The term “evil” is being used partially hyperbolic to make a point.To start, I need to make a few distinctions between concepts a lot of programmers…
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Reflecting on a Year of Gamedev in Zig
One year ago, I started programming a puzzle game from scratch in Zig. While it’s too early to announce the game (more on this later in the year), I want to share some of the insights I’ve gained about gamedev in Zig so far.
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Move on to ESM-Only
Three years ago, I wrote a post about shipping ESM & CJS in a single package , advocating for dual CJS/ESM formats to ease user migration and trying to make the best of both worlds. Back then, I didn’t fully agree with aggressively shipping ESM-only , as I considered the ecosystem wasn’t ready, especially since the…