Hacker News: continuational

New comment by continuational in "Functional programmers need to take a look at Zig"

continuational — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 04:48:31 +0000

Sure, but this is an example from the article, and pertains to sum types in general, not just Maybe.

New comment by continuational in "Functional programmers need to take a look at Zig"

continuational — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 04:47:02 +0000

I don't think so, where's the extra information in the Zig example?

In Rust, which is arguably also a low level language, it looks like this:

    enum Option {
        None,
        Some(T),
    }

New comment by continuational in "Functional programmers need to take a look at Zig"

continuational — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 04:32:28 +0000

Do you really prefer this:

  fn Maybe(comptime T: type) type {
    return union(enum) {
        value: T,
        nothing,

        const Self = @This();

        pub fn just(the_val: T) Self   { return .{ .value = the_val }; }
        pub fn nothing() Self          { return .nothing; }

      }
    }

Over this?

    data Maybe a = Just a | Nothing

New comment by continuational in "Trinity Large Thinking"

continuational — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 08:29:48 +0000

What's open about OpenRouter?

New comment by continuational in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"

continuational — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 06:16:48 +0000

I'm working on Firefly, a programming language for full stack webapps:

https://www.firefly-lang.org/

New comment by continuational in "Real engineering failures instead of success stories"

continuational — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 19:31:25 +0000

To find slop in this submission, you don't have to look any further than the very first picture.

New comment by continuational in "Claude Shannon's randomness-guessing machine"

continuational — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:24:55 +0000

Got 50% in first try, the computer only made two guesses, one right and one wrong, and passed the rest.

New comment by continuational in "Ruby website redesigned"

continuational — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 09:20:28 +0000

Not long ago I was looking through programming language sites to figure out how to best introduce the language I'm working on.

ruby-lang.com stood out with a text in a big font:

Ruby is...

Followed by a paragraph about what makes Ruby special. I think that was an exceptionally simple and natural way of introducing something as complex as a programming language.

New comment by continuational in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)"

continuational — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 06:06:21 +0000

A programming language for the web: https://www.firefly-lang.org/

New comment by continuational in "Where are you supposed to go if you don't care about growth?"

continuational — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 12:54:36 +0000

Sure, but one could imagine that there are people working at the supermarket who would also rather do personal stuff or go cycling. But there they are, serving you.

New comment by continuational in "Comic Code Reviews"

continuational — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 06:12:39 +0000

I think this kind of slop has negative value. It's unclear how much of the information in the comic is hallucinated, and the malformed code "for i = i1+|>" and nonsense text "(starts write hooks!" doesn't bode well.

New comment by continuational in "AWS is 10x slower than a dedicated server for the same price [video]"

continuational — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 08:58:25 +0000

But on Hetzner, you can usually get a dedicated server installed and ready tomorrow.

New comment by continuational in "The terminal of the future"

continuational — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:59:57 +0000

A few years ago I worked on TopShell, an attempt to reimagine the shell+terminal using functional programming: https://github.com/topshell-language/topshell#readme

It ticks some of the boxes, but tonnes of work would be needed to turn it into a full alternative.

New comment by continuational in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"

continuational — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:44:13 +0000

Thank you! Yeah, I think some of the newer frameworks really complicate dataflow. We're trying to keep dataflow clear, though it's a big design space given the distributed nature of webapps.

In any case, if you take it for a spin, I'd love some feedback.

New comment by continuational in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"

continuational — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 06:41:57 +0000

Working on a programming language for webapps!

https://www.firefly-lang.org/

Speed is not an optional feature on the web. The site above is written in Firefly, uses hydration, and scores 100% on PageSpeed Insights.

The language is largely complete, and we're now working on DX: Got a language server, a devserver, and some essential libraries.

New comment by continuational in "The 512KB Club"

continuational — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 17:33:54 +0000

Seems like we can join the club! https://www.firefly-lang.org/ is 218 kB uncompressed.

New comment by continuational in "Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU"

continuational — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 20:09:48 +0000

By requiring transparency? What's the actual problem here?

New comment by continuational in "Eliminating contrails from flying could be cheap"

continuational — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:16:26 +0000

Basic greenhouse effect: Visible light (and ultraviolet light) comes in relatively unhindered. Gets absorbed by the earth and heats it up. The heat is emitted as infrared radiation. This gets absorbed by CO2 (and equivalents) and reemitted in a random direction. Takes a long time to reach space by chance, so the energy stays in the atmosphere for a while.

New comment by continuational in ""Be Different" doesn't work for building products anymore"

continuational — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:29:23 +0000

So where are all the successful AI slop products?

New comment by continuational in "GDPR meant nothing: chat control ends privacy for the EU [video]"

continuational — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 08:07:28 +0000

I don't like that argument either.

However, the continued existence of society requires other people's children, so maybe it's a pretty important investment?