Hacker News: i_don_t_know

New comment by i_don_t_know in "The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad they fixed it during emulation"

i_don_t_know — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 08:38:30 +0000

IIRC you have to probe every page of the stack on Windows. You cannot just subtract a value from ESP/RSP. If you don't probe every page in order, you get a page fault or some other exception (I don't remember which one).

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Designing an FPGA Calculator from Scratch"

i_don_t_know — Tue, 19 May 2026 08:11:59 +0000

Hard real-time control systems is one application.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Saying Goodbye to one line of APL"

i_don_t_know — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:54:54 +0000

Iirc, the interpreter recognizes common idioms (sequences of 2-4 operations) and has optimized fused implementations for those idioms that avoid intermediate results.

It can also avoid creating intermediate results for quite a few operations, because for example reverse, transpose, etc only change how the arrays are traversed (order in which elements are accessed). You can reuse the original data and change the indexing information. That’s known as beating and dragging.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Saying Goodbye to one line of APL"

i_don_t_know — Thu, 14 May 2026 16:20:08 +0000

Here’s some helpful background information on the project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872891

In particular, it has diagrams of the data structures and how the algorithm operates on them.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Embedded Rust or C firmware? Lessons from an industrial microcontroller use case"

i_don_t_know — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:37:57 +0000

> Rust 1.0 is 11 years old and it's still trivial to compile Rust code from then. I doubt that will change in the next 9 years.

Maybe it's trivial to compile Rust code but it's not trivial to build a project with dependencies. I'm trying to get my feet wet with an official USB example project from Embassy on my RP2040. It doesn't work in the latest git repo for some unknown reason (might be my fault, probably is, but it's not obvious to me).

I'm assuming it worked at some point, maybe something changed and someone forgot to update something somewhere (there are lots of example projects). So I thought I'd "git bisect" until I find a working version and go from there. Well, I cannot get it to build against anything older than a year ago and that version also isn't working for me. It's dependency and Rust edition hell.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "The Sinclair ZX Spectrum White Edition"

i_don_t_know — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:14:21 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by i_don_t_know in "The Sinclair ZX Spectrum White Edition"

i_don_t_know — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:05:07 +0000

Sorry, I couldn't find a news report in English. Everything I found was in German.

It's a remake of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer from the 80s, in white.

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum White Edition

i_don_t_know — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:05:07 +0000

Article URL: https://www.heise.de/news/The-Spectrum-White-Edition-Eine-Retro-Legende-bekommt-eine-Neuauflage-11269585.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47874755

Points: 2

# Comments: 3

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Retrofitting JIT Compilers into C Interpreters"

i_don_t_know — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:03:41 +0000

I used to work on LabWindows/CVI an integrated C development environment. It included an "Interactive Execution Window" where you could build programs piecemeal. You added pieces of code, ran them, then appended more code, ran the new pieces, etc. It was as text window so you had more freedom than in a simple REPL.

It integrated with "Function panels". Function panels were our attempt at documenting our library functions. See the second link below. But you could enter values, declare variables, etc and then run the function panel. Behind the scenes, the code is inserted to the interactive window and then run. Results are added back to the function panel.

These also worked while suspended on a breakpoint in your project so available while debugging.

My understanding was that these features were quite popular with customers. They also came it handy internally when we wrote examples and did manual testing.

https://www.ni.com/docs/de-DE/bundle/labwindows-cvi/page/cvi...

https://irkr.fei.tuke.sk/PPpET/_materialy/CVI/Quick_manual.p...

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Ask HN: How Do You Relax?"

i_don_t_know — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 08:57:31 +0000

I used to run long distance, no music, no headphones, no trackers, no watch. Let your mind drift, or focus on the rest of the course. Or go swimming and count laps. Or go bouldering (in doors), pick a route and focus on it.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "An incoherent Rust"

i_don_t_know — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 13:20:06 +0000

I’m not sure I fully understand but this seems to be the kind of problem that Ocaml functors solve. You program against an interface (signature) and you supply a concrete implementation (structure) when you want to run it. You can use different implementations in different parts of your application.

So maybe do something similar in Rust by expanding how you import and export modules?

New comment by i_don_t_know in "No Semicolons Needed"

i_don_t_know — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 13:26:37 +0000

The Haskell language report precisely defines how layout determines structure: https://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/haskell2010/haskellch10...

Any language that uses layout to determine structure should have a similarly precise definition.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Electronics for Kids, 2nd Edition"

i_don_t_know — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 09:36:14 +0000

I loved my Kosmos electronics kits. My mom threw out the kits eventually but I still have the manuals.

https://patric-sokoll.de/SonstigeSammlungen/Kosmos%20E200/Ha...

My first computer was their CP1. It was aimed at older children and teens. You programmed it in a custom assembly language. The manual included lots of projects and instructions on how to hook it up to their electronics kits.

http://www.8bit-homecomputermuseum.at/computer/kosmos_comput...

http://www.8bit-homecomputermuseum.at/computer/pictures/kosm...

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Compiling Match Statements to Bytecode"

i_don_t_know — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:14:41 +0000

Simon Peyton Jones's "The implementation of functional programming languages" has a chapter on the "Efficient compilation of pattern matching" (chapter 5 by Philip Wadler).

https://simon.peytonjones.org/assets/pdfs/slpj-book-1987-2up...

Lean-TUI for the lean proof assistant

i_don_t_know — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:56:12 +0000

Article URL: https://codeberg.org/wvhulle/lean-tui

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141062

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Shatner is making an album with 35 metal icons"

i_don_t_know — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:14:41 +0000

Thanks! That was actually really good. His performance matches the emotions underlying the song.

Something all the covers of Behind Blue Eyes by The Who seem to miss is the slowly rising anger and frustration.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?"

i_don_t_know — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:13:22 +0000

When I became interested in FPGAs recently, I read this book https://nostarch.com/gettingstartedwithfpgas

I bought a cheap FPGA board based on Lattice's ice40. There are free OSS tools to write, simulate, and install your Verilog/VHDL design onto the ice40.

It's probably a far cry from what a professional FPGA programmer does with Vivado etc but it might give you an inexpensive idea of the basics and if you want to pursue it.

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Fun with Algebraic Effects – From Toy Examples to Hardcaml Simulations"

i_don_t_know — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 21:21:23 +0000

Chapter 9 and section 10.7 of this book show some interesting (and to me unexpected) uses of effects in Ocaml and how they compare to implementations based on monads:

https://lukstafi.github.io/curious-ocaml/new_book.html

The dscheck model-checker is another interesting application of effects: https://github.com/ocaml-multicore/dscheck

New comment by i_don_t_know in "What if writing tests was a joyful experience? (2023)"

i_don_t_know — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:31:36 +0000

mdx[1] is another variation on this, also in the Ocaml ecosystem. It’s Ocaml’s version of documentation tests as in Elixir and Rust.

But it’s not limited to that. You can write tests in markdown files independently from your documentation. Use “dune test” to run the tests and review failures with “git diff”. Accept the changes if they are correct (changed behavior) with “dune promote”. Very nice workflow.

[1] https://github.com/realworldocaml/mdx

New comment by i_don_t_know in "Ask HN: Books to learn 6502 ASM and the Apple II"

i_don_t_know — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 11:46:23 +0000

I'm seconding the recommendation to look at Rodnay Zack's books. For example, I really enjoyed Advanced 6502 Programming. It's a project-based tutorial for a custom 6502 machine. The design and schematics are in the book.

https://archive.org/details/Advanced_6502_Programming/mode/2...