Hacker News: TickleSteve

New comment by TickleSteve in "Why is everything so scalable?"

TickleSteve — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 12:25:43 +0000

scale vertically before horizontally...

- scaling vertically is cheaper to develop

- scaling horizontally gets you further.

What is correct for your situation depends on your human, financial and time resources.

New comment by TickleSteve in "IBM Intellistation 185 AIX workstation (2016)"

TickleSteve — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:05:47 +0000

thats true on many systems... nothing special about 0x0 other than NULL happens to be defined as 0 in most toolchains an some functions use NULL to report an error.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s"

TickleSteve — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 08:19:43 +0000

The technical definition of opoerating system is the software that manages the resources of the computer, i.e. RAM, storage, processor time, etc (Typically known as the Kernel).

This usage is more "User Interface" or "shell".

New comment by TickleSteve in "Object-oriented design patterns in C and kernel development"

TickleSteve — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 07:40:18 +0000

Never. Do. This...

I was involved in a product with a large codebase structured like this and it was a maintainability nightmare with no upsides. Multiple attempts were made to move away from this to no avail.

Consider that the code has terrible readability due to no syntax-sugar, the compiler cannot see through the pointers to optimise anything, tooling has no clue what to do with it. On top of that, the syntax is odd and requires any newbies to effectively understand how a c++ compiler works under-the-hood to get anything out of it.

On top of those points, the dubious benefits of OOP make doing this a quick way to kill long-term maintainability of your project.

For the devs who come after you, dont try to turn C into a poor-mans C++. If you really want to, please just use C++.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Universal Tool Calling Protocol (UTCP)"

TickleSteve — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 07:12:05 +0000

maybe we could implement a UTCP->REST bridge for another unnecessary abstraction layer..

New comment by TickleSteve in "Efficient Computer's Electron E1 CPU – 100x more efficient than Arm?"

TickleSteve — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 11:43:31 +0000

there are orders of magnitudes more embedded processor sales than desktop CPUs.... So the answer really is... lots of people will want it.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Doing Hard Things"

TickleSteve — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:54:24 +0000

K1 (racing) kayaks are unstable and very narrow, most other types are fairly stable tho.

New comment by TickleSteve in "NeuralOS: An operating system powered by neural networks"

TickleSteve — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 06:46:43 +0000

What they mean is UI, not OS.

The purpose of an OS is to manage the resources of the computer, CPU, RAM, devices, etc. This is simply a UI generated by an NN.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Learn Makefiles"

TickleSteve — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:28:03 +0000

Stop with the alternatives... just use make for this task.

Seriously. :o)

New comment by TickleSteve in "Show HN: I built a hardware processor that runs Python"

TickleSteve — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 13:09:23 +0000

There is a long history of CPUs tailored to specific languages:

- Lisp/lispm

- Ada/iAPX

- C/ARM

- Java/Jazelle

Most don't really take off or go in different directions as the language goes out of fashion.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Ubuntu 25.10 Replaces GNU Coreutils with Rust Uutils"

TickleSteve — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 06:42:36 +0000

Correct me if I'm wrong but the next LTS will be 26.04 which would give them 6 months to get maturity and stability... For such an important set of utilities, that seems unlikely.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Ask HN: why is my F500 employer okay with paying 5x to freelancers?"

TickleSteve — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 13:42:06 +0000

Risk.

Contractors get paid for the time they're not in work.

I've been on both sides and have always been lucky in that I've gone from contract to contract but that is certainly not guaranteed.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Apple’s Darwin OS and XNU Kernel Deep Dive"

TickleSteve — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 07:44:11 +0000

Mach was never based on BSD, it replaced it. Mach is the descendant of the Accent and Aleph kernels. BSD came into the frame for the userland tools.

"Mach was developed as a replacement for the kernel in the BSD version of Unix," (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel))

Interestingly, MkLinux was the same type of project but for Linux instead of BSD (i.e. Linux userland with Mach kernel).

New comment by TickleSteve in "Investigating MacPaint's Source Code"

TickleSteve — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 09:38:18 +0000

The correct phrase is "mechanical sympathy" but it means effectively the same. Its relatively well known in software optimisation and means tailoring the design of the software to match the characteristics of the hardware.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Show HN: Nue – Apps lighter than a React button"

TickleSteve — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 11:45:25 +0000

"Pure" JS exists as a concept, not a project.

Having a tiny standard library is also a good thing, not a bad one... I'm not saying its an ideal API but in general, smaller==better (within reason).

New comment by TickleSteve in "Show HN: Nue – Apps lighter than a React button"

TickleSteve — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 09:55:13 +0000

Pure JS is that interface... you're arguing for multiple unnecessary abstraction layers piled on top of each other.

More abstraction != easier to use.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Two new PebbleOS watches"

TickleSteve — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:45:53 +0000

There are similar devices (i.e. SiLabs) that allow multi-protocol use with the radio (I would expect Nordic to have a similar feature set), tho yes, you're right the resource issue would be a major limitation.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Two new PebbleOS watches"

TickleSteve — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:43:22 +0000

vertical speed likely relied on the barometer rather than the accelerometer for exactly that reason.

New comment by TickleSteve in "Stupid Smart Pointers in C"

TickleSteve — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 10:20:37 +0000

static allocation is the recommended mechanism in embedded code for reliability reasons, you have thought about you worst-case allocation and accounted for it... right? Also fragmentation and dynamic behaviour are bad things when your code has to run "forever".

New comment by TickleSteve in "Thoughts on Daylight Computer"

TickleSteve — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 12:49:25 +0000

packets are sequenced, integrity checked and encrypted to prevent replay attacks so unlikely to be a simple "send packet again" issue. More likely a key debounce issue or driver issue.