Hacker News: numeromancer

New comment by numeromancer in "Xmake: A cross-platform build utility based on Lua"

numeromancer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:23:59 +0000

That's what I meant: the first you can do, the second, not.

New comment by numeromancer in "Xmake: A cross-platform build utility based on Lua"

numeromancer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:01:07 +0000

I think the creators did it a disservice to xmake when they tried to unluaize the syntax. You can also do:

    target("foo", {
      kind = "binary",
      files = { "src/*.cpp" },
      includedirs = { "src" },
      defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" },
    })

which suits Lua better. Unfortunately you cannot do

    target {
      name = "foo",
      kind = "binary",
      files = { "src/*.cpp" },
      includedirs = { "src" },
      defines = { "FOO", "BAR=BAZ" },
    }

which would be the lua-est lua of all.

New comment by numeromancer in "Dead Internet Theory"

numeromancer — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:42:00 +0000

"photos of giants that built the pyramids in Egypt, all the way to short videos of pretty girls saying that the EU is bad for Poland."

Those sound funny; why would they make you sad?

New comment by numeromancer in "Ask HN: What projects do you donate to?"

numeromancer — Tue, 27 May 2025 17:17:44 +0000

I focus on peer-to-peer services, as I think it is the most important focus for free software:

- Radicle - IPFS - torrents and magnet links - i2p - syncthing - PeerTube/ActivityPub

&al

New comment by numeromancer in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2025)"

numeromancer — Fri, 02 May 2025 17:22:57 +0000

"allows them to have more resources to invest in patient care" LOL

New comment by numeromancer in "I create buildings from mushroom components"

numeromancer — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 15:09:28 +0000

PW;DR: Pay-Walled; Didn't Read. But...

Will this be the stuff of the housing of tomorrowind?

New comment by numeromancer in "Long division verified via Hoare logic"

numeromancer — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 14:07:33 +0000

> will likely not be a major boost for software productivity

You can make plastic knives much faster and cheaper than metal ones. Production!

New comment by numeromancer in "Nvidia Security Team: “What if we just stopped using C?” (2022)"

numeromancer — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 13:49:21 +0000

It failed to catch on outside the defense industry because that is where is started. It was long sneered at as a "language designed by committee".

In one programming class, in college, we used a text-book called "Oh my, Modula 3!". On the back they explained the title, saying "better 'Oh my, Modula 3!' than 'Oh no, Ada!'".

New comment by numeromancer in "Markdown's Big Brother: Say Hello to AsciiDoc"

numeromancer — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:37:33 +0000

ASCII makes up 90% of all digital text; UTF-8 makes up the other 90%.

New comment by numeromancer in "Understanding Memory Management, Part 1: C"

numeromancer — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:50:44 +0000

Just no.

    address = X
    length = *X
    address = address + 1
    while length > 0 {
        address = address + 1
        print *address
    }

New comment by numeromancer in "Janet for Mortals (2023)"

numeromancer — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 15:34:49 +0000

I am not waiting for Janet for Ethereals. Once it ships, it will always have been available.

New comment by numeromancer in "C Until It Is No Longer C"

numeromancer — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 16:24:22 +0000

No.

New comment by numeromancer in "A book Stanley Kubrick didn’t want anyone to read is being published"

numeromancer — Tue, 07 May 2024 12:18:25 +0000

Stanley Kubrick was one of that kind of people who cannot take criticism of anything they do.

New comment by numeromancer in "Ask HN: What nonfiction books do you keep rereading?"

numeromancer — Mon, 06 May 2024 21:00:43 +0000

The Abolition of Man - C. S. Lewis

All Things Considered - G. K. Chesterton

Some others I daren't mention.

Category Theory for Programmers - Bartosz Milewski

The Design of Relational Databases - Heikki Mannila, Kari-Jouko Raiha

New comment by numeromancer in "VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'"

numeromancer — Mon, 06 May 2024 20:48:08 +0000

Whenever you extrapolate the "corporate vision" of these VC pontificators, you see a company all of whose revenue goes to investor share-grabbers, and whose projects are all funded by employees who are paid nothing.

New comment by numeromancer in "The NSA is just days away from taking over the internet"

numeromancer — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:08:31 +0000

The Deep State treats human rights as damage, and routes around it.

New comment by numeromancer in "Gerbil Scheme – A Lisp for the 21st Century"

numeromancer — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 14:00:35 +0000

I think we'll be led by a programmer from another language who comes and unites the tribes against the languages that now dominate, a voice from the outer world. The "Lispan al-Gaib", if you will.

New comment by numeromancer in "How do lava lamps help with Internet encryption?"

numeromancer — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 12:35:10 +0000

Is this a trial run for an April 1 article?

New comment by numeromancer in "A quantitative test of Diamond’s axis of orientation hypothesis"

numeromancer — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 15:39:04 +0000

A detailed criticism of Diamond's hypothesis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFECyeihuZY

New comment by numeromancer in "Command line interface guidelines (2021)"

numeromancer — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 16:35:26 +0000

We ran so much faster when we didn't have to run with shoes on.