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Dev Compass – Programming Philosophy Quiz Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News The content introduces a tool designed to help individuals explore their programming philosophy by mapping their preferences on a compass that spans two dimensions: Abstract vs. Concrete Style and Easy for Humans vs. Easy for Computers. By answering 20 questions about their coding preferences, users can determine their position on this developer compass. |
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Beyond Booleans Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming The content discusses the type of the expression "2 + 2 = 4" in TypeScript, highlighting that it evaluates to a Boolean type. It explains that logical expressions in TypeScript are inherently of Boolean type and that TypeScript can infer this without needing explicit type annotations. The summary notes that TypeScript has a single Boolean type with only two possible values: true and false. It also includes a visualization element (not shown) to support the explanation. |
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X-ray scans reveal Buddhist prayers inside tiny Tibetan scrolls Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News Researchers at Germany’s Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) have successfully examined an antique Buddhist scroll from Mongolian nomads using 3D X-ray tomography and AI, avoiding physical damage to the delicate artifact. The scroll, known as a dharani, is a small prayer scroll traditionally carried by nomadic families. This particular scroll and its accompanying shrine are part of a collection that survived the tumultuous period of the Soviet-backed Mongolian Revolution in 1921, which led to the destruction |
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Apple’s new Processor Trace instrument is incredible Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming Apple's new Processor Trace instrument in Xcode addresses common performance issues developers face, such as user complaints about slow apps or battery drain. Unlike traditional profilers like Time Profiler that offer statistical sampling, Processor Trace captures every branching decision made by the code at the CPU level, providing a clear view of the app's execution flow. This tool offers a more comprehensive analysis than Intel's VTune Profiler, which, while advanced, is complex and not optimized for iOS or macOS development, especially |
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Dyna – Logic Programming for Machine Learning Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News Dyna is a programming language specifically designed for machine learning researchers, building on the concepts of logic programming languages like Datalog and Prolog. It enables flexible execution orders and allows rules within programs to be weighted, which facilitates the expression of complex programs succinctly. For instance, operations such as matrix multiplication and the Fibonacci sequence can be written in just a line of code. Launched in 2004, the Dyna project aims to bridge the gap between non-executable mathematical notation and executable code |
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Why People Read Assembly Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming The article discusses the performance of the MurmurHash64A hash function, particularly focusing on its assembly code and optimization opportunities. It notes that while the function itself is effective, there are inefficiencies in how certain operations, like `memcpy`, are handled in different compilers (LLVM and GCC). The author points out that the assembly code generated by LLVM has multiple unnecessary operations that could be streamlined. For instance, it could inline `memcpy` and reduce redundant loads of constants. The article |
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A Better Vocabulary for Testing Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming The author expresses frustration with the current vocabulary and classification for software testing, arguing that terms such as "unit test" and "integration test" lack clear definitions. The actual behaviors being tested and the methodologies used in end-to-end (E2E) tests are often underspecified, and other types of tests—like stress and load tests—lack a proper framework. The author advocates for a more actionable vocabulary that allows testers to adapt their approaches based on resources. They propose a categorization of tests into |
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OpenAI Progress Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News The content discusses the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) over the years, highlighting significant milestones from 2018 to 2025. It features dialogues from various iterations of OpenAI's language models, showcasing their development from GPT-1 to GPT-4. Each model's responses reflect a growing capacity to engage in conversations about AI's implications, ethical considerations, and future advancements. The summary emphasizes the importance of understanding AI's capabilities, potential uses, and alignment with human values as the technology progresses |
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How to Keep Services Running During Failures? Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming Graceful degradation is a design principle in software applications that allows systems to maintain essential functionality even during failures or heavy traffic. Instead of crashing, a system operates at reduced capacity. For instance, a video streaming service might display a general list of popular videos if its recommendation engine fails, ensuring that video playback continues. Implementing graceful degradation involves strategies like traffic control, failure management, and system health visibility. Rate limiting or request throttling acts like a bouncer, managing incoming requests during high traffic events to |
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The Peculiar Case of Japanese Web Design Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming In a 2013 blog post by David on Randomwire, he examined the distinctive nature of Japanese web design, contrasting Japan's international reputation for minimalism with its actual online presence, which is characterized by maximalism. Japanese websites often feature vibrant colors, dense text, and numerous images, diverging from the three-color design principle prevalent in other cultures. To investigate this phenomenon further, the author analyzed 2,671 images from popular websites worldwide using AI, revealing distinct web design clusters. Not |
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Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News The content suggests blocking Reels and Shorts on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube. It also highlights the ability to set scrolling limits on any app through an antiscroll mode, promoting a distraction-free experience by eliminating ads and short video content. |
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Dicing an Onion, the Mathematically Optimal Way Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News The project discusses the mathematical approach to dicing onions, motivated by widespread curiosity about the topic on platforms like YouTube. Chef J. Kenji López-Alt explored optimal methods for achieving uniform piece sizes in onion dicing. The article describes starting with a halved onion and analyzing the effects of vertical cuts on piece size consistency, using the concept of standard deviation to measure variations in piece sizes. Specifically, it focuses on relative standard deviation, allowing for unitless comparisons of how closely the sizes cluster around |
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Sebastian Lague: Ray-Traced Glass and Caustics Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming Sure! Please provide the content you'd like me to summarize. |
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Hello Mac OS X Tiger (2022) Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming In January 2005, a user excitedly upgrades to Mac OS X Tiger and decides to develop apps using Xcode 2.0. However, they struggle to find helpful tutorials online. The user starts a new Cocoa Application project called "Hello Tiger" in Xcode. They modify the main window by adding UI elements like an NSButton and two NSTextField controls, centering the text in one of the fields using the Inspector tool. The user then creates a new object called "MainWindow |
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Pfeilstorch Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News A Pfeilstorch (German for 'arrow stork') is a white stork that returns to Europe with an arrow or spear embedded in its body after wintering in Africa. Approximately 25 such storks have been documented in Germany as of 2003. The first notable Pfeilstorch, found in 1822 near Klütz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, carried a 75-centimeter spear in its neck and is on display at the University of Rostock. This stork was |
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Typechecker Zoo Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming The content discusses a personal project aimed at creating minimal implementations of notable static type systems over the last 50 years. The project involves developing toy versions of programming languages and core type-checking algorithms, starting from simpler systems and advancing to modern dependent types. The implementations will be done in Rust due to its good parser ecosystem and ease of installation, alongside a preference for the contrast between functional languages and a non-functional programming language. This project is intended as a fun side activity, rather than a rigorous introduction to |
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Branch prediction: Why CPUs can't wait? - namvdo's blog Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: /r/programming In a blog post on August 15, 2025, the author discusses their exploration of low-level computer fundamentals, focusing on branch prediction in CPUs and its impact on performance. They highlight the LLVM compiler infrastructure, renowned for its optimizations, but emphasize that even the best compiler techniques can be hindered by hardware limitations, specifically unpredictable branches. Poor branch prediction can undermine the advantages gained through LLVM optimizations. The author notes that branch misprediction has a latency cost of around 5 nanoseconds, |
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PuTTY has a new website Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News PuTTY is a free SSH client for Windows and Unix, featuring an xterm-style terminal emulator. It is primarily developed and maintained by Simon Tatham. Users can access the latest version on the download page or visit the main website for more information. |
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Best Practices for Building Agentic AI Systems Published: 2025-08-16 | Origin: Hacker News The author has been experimenting with AI agents in UserJot, a platform for feedback, roadmaps, and changelogs. The goal is to create sophisticated agent systems that can analyze customer feedback at scale, identify patterns, and automatically generate changelog entries without manual effort. After extensive testing and reverse engineering tools, a basic beta version has been released. Key findings from building these agent systems include the effectiveness of a two-tier structure: Primary Agents manage conversations and task delegation, while Subagents execute specific |
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Timeout Middleware in Go: Simple in Theory, Complex in Practice Published: 2025-08-15 | Origin: /r/programming Timeouts are essential for HTTP servers to manage client resource usage and safeguard against DoS attacks. A developer encountered challenges while trying to implement a longer timeout for a file upload endpoint in Go, realizing that the typical solutions failed silently, which frustrated users and developers alike. The article advocates for building a robust, chainable timeout middleware using Go's middleware pattern. Middleware allows HTTP handlers to be wrapped with additional functionalities, promoting modular, maintainable code and enabling various behaviors before and after the original handler executes, |