Hacker News: csb6

Gnat: The GNU Ada Compiler (2004) [pdf]

csb6 — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:40:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.adacore.com/uploads/books/gnat-book.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48752095

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by csb6 in "Show HN: Salt – a systems language with Z3 theorem proving in the compiler"

csb6 — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:34:22 +0000

Yes, it has generics. The syntax is Pascal-like, which some people used to C-family languages dislike but I personally find nice. Performance can definitely match performant C code. (intended use cases include real-time systems and embedded devices)

The language overview can be found here: https://docs.adacore.com/spark2014-docs/html/ug/en/spark_201...

New comment by csb6 in "Show HN: Salt – a systems language with Z3 theorem proving in the compiler"

csb6 — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:13:25 +0000

For people looking for other languages with statically checked contracts, you might want to check out SPARK, which has been around in some form since the late 1980s. It is a subset of the Ada language and had been used for safety critical code in aerospace and defense projects, as well as for some Nvidia firmware.

It also uses Z3 to discharge proof obligations generated by the contract annotations, and it lets you use swap out different theorem provers as backends.

The GNAT Ada compiler (which is part of GCC) allows you to turn off the dynamic safety checks that are usually inserted into Ada programs at build time so you can optionally remove them if they are proven unnecessary.

Here are some resources for comparison:

- https://www.adacore.com/languages/spark

- https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/chapters/01...

New comment by csb6 in "The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party"

csb6 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 19:26:40 +0000

> In a podcast segment about immigration and deportations Allard stated his opinion and said that "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish."

Seems pretty cut and dry

New comment by csb6 in "Zig's new bitCast semantics and LLVM back end improvements"

csb6 — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:36:54 +0000

They have definitely done a lot of marketing through social media and forums like HN. There have been large numbers of posts here by Zig's developers for years, and a few releases of LLVM even mentioned Zig prominently in their release notes.

New comment by csb6 in "The war on terror primed America for autocracy"

csb6 — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:16:10 +0000

"Real excesses" is a bit of an understatement. There is the security theater instituted by the TSA, the militarization of police, normalized Islamophobia, mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, torture as an official military policy, indefinite detention of "unlawful combatants", a trillion dollars spent destroying Iraq and Afghanistan, a million killed and many more made refugees. The rise of ISIS and the refugee crises in Europe can be traced back to the War on Terror. The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust").

New comment by csb6 in "H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office"

csb6 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 23:38:54 +0000

That is a rather narrow definition of checks and balances. The term can be applied to any group of organizations where each organization has power and interest to limit the power of the others.

New comment by csb6 in "Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans"

csb6 — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:15:29 +0000

If you want view ticket pricing as a pure economics problem (it is not), consider that live shows are also a way to build up and expand a fanbase. If only a handful of rich people (or people who bought tickets the second they went on sale) are at your show, you are not expanding your audience. Since streaming has decimated most artists' income from record sales, it makes sense to try and build a large fanbase who will regularly come to shows as well as buy merchandise. Tours often have exclusive merchandise than fans will want to buy, so all the more reason to attract more people.

As a side note, this notion that a phenomenon being the result of market forces means it is fair and has no issues seems to be a blinkered view of the world. Surely enjoying high quality art should be possible for a broad section of society?

New comment by csb6 in "The Zulip Foundation"

csb6 — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:02:51 +0000

I have no qualms with him deciding to step away from developing Zulip or setting up a foundation. My qualms are with his choice to work for an AI company when someone of his experience could easily have found a job working somewhere else. Public figures should be subject to criticism of their ethical choices when they make bad ones.

New comment by csb6 in "The Zulip Foundation"

csb6 — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:57:03 +0000

If he thinks working for Anthropic is a good "cause" to devote his time to then that is also very disappointing. That would make him either very delusional as to the effects of Anthropic's work or naive in what he can achieve as their employee.

New comment by csb6 in "The Zulip Foundation"

csb6 — Fri, 15 May 2026 20:26:27 +0000

> Over the last few months, I’ve been reflecting deeply on the myriad ways in which AI is changing the world, and how it might change the world in the future. And I came to the conclusion that it’s vitally important that we navigate this strange adolescence of technology well, and that I should contribute to this cause more directly than I ever could as the CEO of Kandra Labs.

The compensation for a senior developer at Anthropic is also certainly much better than a FOSS nonprofit - I'm sure that had nothing to do with his reasoning.

Sad to see yet another longtime open source developer begin working for AI companies that disregard free software licenses for their training and enable the deluge of low quality AI pull requests that waste maintainers' time.

New comment by csb6 in "The AI zombification of universities"

csb6 — Thu, 14 May 2026 21:26:35 +0000

In the United States, "college" and "university" are generally used interchangeably. I absolutely agree with your second point and the shift has been going on so long that people are genuinely baffled by the idea that college should not just be "white-collar vocational school"

New comment by csb6 in "How do I deal with memory leaks? (2022)"

csb6 — Fri, 08 May 2026 19:27:54 +0000

The FAQ was mostly written before C++11 with some updates since then. I don't think he is rewriting every code snippet to match modern styles. It is an enormous FAQ and not meant as an introduction to the language.

New comment by csb6 in "In Blow to Democrats, Virginia Court Strikes Down House Map"

csb6 — Fri, 08 May 2026 19:12:06 +0000

This whole gerrymandering war really shows the tremendous dysfunction of the American political system. A state legislature's ruling party has such a strong incentive to gerrymander that it is extremely hard to pass reforms such as independent redistricting commissions. (my state is lucky enough to have citizen ballot initiatives that can bypass the legislature, but not all states have that process)

In a functioning system the U.S. Supreme Court would step in and check the power of all legislatures to gerrymander, ending the tit-for-tat redistricting, but this Court has instead chosen to fan the flames by reducing barriers to gerrymandering. (whether racial or political party based)

I wouldn't be surprised if they strike down independent redistricting commissions in a future case given their recent decisions on independent agencies. The 5-4 decision in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission likely wouldn't be decided the same today given the changes in the court's composition since 2015. So it goes.

New comment by csb6 in "This Month in Ladybird – April 2026"

csb6 — Sun, 03 May 2026 21:27:41 +0000

I've never understood that stance because surely the mere threat (even implied) of a sponsor removing thousands in funding would be enough to exert influence on the project.

The sponsor money is used to pay developers to work on Ladybird so a major sponsor pulling out could mean laying off core developers, which the project would obviously be motivated to prevent.

GNAT: The GNU Ada Compiler (2004) [pdf]

csb6 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:24:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.adacore.com/uploads/books/gnat-book.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917062

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by csb6 in "Sergey Brin Confronted Gavin Newsom"

csb6 — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:20:45 +0000

I am skeptical billionaires will actually leave their mansions in Malibu or Santa Barbara in any significant numbers just because of higher taxes they can easily afford to pay.

New comment by csb6 in "Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages"

csb6 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:26:51 +0000

Ada 83 did have generics - maybe you meant OOP support? That wasn't added until Ada 95.

New comment by csb6 in "Sports bets on prediction markets ruled to be "swaps," exempt from state laws"

csb6 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:21:31 +0000

If profit is the measure of utility, then gambling is just as useful: a winning bet makes you a profit or reduces your overall losses (depending on how you view it). But fundamentally you are making a bet that some future dice roll will go your way. It is still gambling.

New comment by csb6 in "Sports bets on prediction markets ruled to be "swaps," exempt from state laws"

csb6 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 22:16:15 +0000

The key contradiction is that financial speculation and gambling are a distinction without a difference. Financial speculation is just now more accessible and widespread than ever due to the accessibility and aggressive promotion of gambling/stock trading/crypto trading apps/websites.

Rather than reigning in financial speculation and gambling our institutions seem to have resolved the contradiction by reclassifying gambling as a legitimate "market".