Hacker News: docandrew

New comment by docandrew in "Ada 2022"

docandrew — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 03:03:36 +0000

I use it for many of my side projects. I just like the language, the strong typing fits well with my work.

New comment by docandrew in "Extropic is building thermodynamic computing hardware"

docandrew — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:17:56 +0000

Hype aside, if you can get an answer to a computing problem with error bars in significantly less time, where precision just isn’t that important (such as LLMs) this could be a game changer.

New comment by docandrew in "Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?"

docandrew — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 05:35:05 +0000

I had a Palm Pre and really enjoyed this, shame it didn’t make it.

New comment by docandrew in "Automated Lean Proofs for Every Type"

docandrew — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 21:22:05 +0000

Feels like maybe this is retreading ground covered by Why3ML, but perhaps I’m missing something.

https://www.why3.org/doc/whyml.html

New comment by docandrew in "Monodraw"

docandrew — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 17:31:07 +0000

My favorite diagramming tool hands-down! It’s the only one that’s ever “clicked” for me, I use it all the time.

New comment by docandrew in "I tried vibe coding in BASIC and it didn't go well"

docandrew — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 02:43:48 +0000

Maybe other folks’ vibe coding experiences are a lot richer than mine have been, but I read the article and reached the opposite conclusion of the author.

I was actually pretty impressed that it did as well as it did in a largely forgotten language and outdated platform. Looks like a vibe coding win to me.

New comment by docandrew in "Lua beats MicroPython for serious embedded devs"

docandrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:45:53 +0000

nginx and Roblox and redis and nmap and neovim and cryengine … the list goes on

There are a LOT of tools with embedded Lua scripting capabilities.

New comment by docandrew in "Lua beats MicroPython for embedded devs"

docandrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:39:53 +0000

Not having to put length-1 everywhere is a good thing, actually.

New comment by docandrew in "Wrong ways to use the databases, when the pendulum swung too far"

docandrew — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 10:25:48 +0000

I think his point is that ORMs (and maybe DBs in general) are used for data persistence by folks who just don’t know any alternative.

New comment by docandrew in "Ask HN: What less-popular systems programming language are you using?"

docandrew — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 22:20:40 +0000

Fun side projects mostly, my GH username is the same as here if you’re (morbidly) curious.

New comment by docandrew in "Ask HN: What less-popular systems programming language are you using?"

docandrew — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:01:11 +0000

It’s a little like go in that it compiles quickly enough to replace scripts while still yielding good enough performance for a lot of systems tasks. It predates go and I wish Google had just supported D, it’s a much nicer language IMO

New comment by docandrew in "Ask HN: What less-popular systems programming language are you using?"

docandrew — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 02:07:06 +0000

Ada for bigger projects, D for quick one-offs and more “scripty” work.

New comment by docandrew in "We were wrong about GPUs"

docandrew — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 02:47:09 +0000

Move to EKS and you still need a k8s engineer, but one who also knows AWS, and you also pay the AWS premium for the hosting, egress, etc. It might make sense for your use case but I definitely wouldn’t consider it a cost-saving measure.

New comment by docandrew in "We were wrong about GPUs"

docandrew — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 02:41:20 +0000

“etcd, apiserver, and controllers.”

…and containerd and csi plugins and kubelet and cni plugins and kubectl and kube-proxy and ingresses and load balancers…

New comment by docandrew in "Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel"

docandrew — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 22:45:49 +0000

It started as a side project.

They may not match the rate of upstream development, but doing their own thing is going to be a faster path to their goal of Rust in the kernel than trying to convince everyone else to do something that they don’t seem to want.

New comment by docandrew in "Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel"

docandrew — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 21:42:48 +0000

I don’t see why forking is not an option here.

If the upstream maintainers don’t want to adopt it, the Rust folks can gradually rewrite the bits they want to and let the market decide. Use the Ballmer “embrace, extend, extinguish” model.

New comment by docandrew in "C stdlib isn't threadsafe and even safe Rust didn't save us"

docandrew — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 21:26:20 +0000

I’d argue that libraries shouldn’t read environment variables at all. They’re passed on the initial program stack and look just like stack vars, so the issue here is essentially the same as taking the address of a stack variable and misusing it.

Just like a library wouldn’t try to use argv directly, it shouldn’t use envp either (even if done via getenv/setenv)

New comment by docandrew in "Ada's dependent types, and its types as a whole"

docandrew — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 20:48:22 +0000

You can embed and work with UTF-8 strings with no issue (I have source with emoji string literals), but if you need complex manipulation of code points vs glyphs etc. I’m not sure how robust the libraries are for what you are trying to do.

https://ada-lang.io/docs/learn/how-tos/gnat_and_utf_8/

New comment by docandrew in "Ada's dependent types, and its types as a whole"

docandrew — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 16:43:07 +0000

One thing that’s kind of interesting about SPARK in particular - all the contracts get compiled to why3ml as an intermediate step before running through the solvers. If there are any VCs that can’t be discharged using the automatic provers, you can manually prove them using Coq: https://blog.adacore.com/using-coq-to-verify-spark-2014-code

I think the lines between what some consider true DT and what is possible w/ Ada might be more blurred than people expect.

New comment by docandrew in "Ada's dependent types, and its types as a whole"

docandrew — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 16:07:00 +0000

What’s nice is that you can do it in steps - you may have a hard time proving full specification, but you can prove absence of bad behavior like buffer overruns, etc and go from there.