Hacker News: smallstepforman

New comment by smallstepforman in "Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes"

smallstepforman — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 08:08:03 +0000

The other day I just wanted to loop through characters in a std::string to copy data to a new string with a few escape characters (sending to peripheral device). Simple enough task for AI. I got a coroutine monstrocity back, with copies to std::array and a range based iterator, since I specified C++23. If I specified C++11, I would have received a: char p = src.data(); while (p) { … p++; }

I had the experience to keep calling out AI to simplify and downgrade the solution to something primitive, which ended up smaller, faster, easier to maintain. Juniors with real world experience would not bother, they’ll take the first working AI result.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Should you normalize RGB values by 255 or 256?"

smallstepforman — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:22:50 +0000

BeOS API is based on pixel centers, not that anyone cares anymore …

New comment by smallstepforman in "The Pirate Bay Remains Resilient, 20 Years After the Raid"

smallstepforman — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:06:14 +0000

In non free countries it wont show up since the ISP will block the domain (eg. Oz). Free countries show it …

New comment by smallstepforman in "Performance of Rust Language [pdf]"

smallstepforman — Tue, 26 May 2026 03:59:29 +0000

c++ uses rich type system to avoid aliasing when it can, as well as template meta programming.

Eg: delete_scene(void *arg) vs delete_scene(T *arg)

New comment by smallstepforman in "Haiku"

smallstepforman — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:41:11 +0000

Linux is just the kernel, the ecosystem is make up of half a dozen desktop managers, windowing systems, API toolkits, sound servers, file systems, package hits etc. There is an abstraction layer between all these systems. Multiuser, whether you need it or not.

Haiku is a unified system, so native apps have one windowing system, one desktop environment, one API, one media kit, one file system etc. There are less layers for data to travel, hence it will always be faster. Also Haiku targets desktop users (single user system, for better or worse), while Linux in all honesty targets servers and embedded with desktop a distant 3rd use case. Haiku package management is a generation ahead of Linux.

Finally, BeOS/Haiku core architecture is built from modern 90's designs, while Linux started as a clone of Unix (deep in the bowels of Linux there is a TTY terminal block device).

Finally, BeOS had a cool factor (and their fanboys) that Linux never had. Dual CPU from day #1. Blinkenlights. Geek port. Playing videos on a face of a cube. is_computer_on(). Linux is sooo boring in comparison.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Haiku"

smallstepforman — Fri, 15 May 2026 09:36:24 +0000

Test the API kernel calling convention when dealing with 64 bit IEE754 doubles on a 32 bit CPU, especially when dealing with MSB vs LSB processors.

Also, a long time ago (pre 486DX), processors did not have FPU circuitry instead it was a FPU coprocessor. When dealing with a kernel context switch, you'd have to copy all registers to a stack. With a coprocessor, you'd have to make sure those registers got copied as well. Which was slower with coprocessors ... So for a time some real time kernels did not allow context switching of FPU. To support that, you'd get the performance hit.

These days its all integrated so you dont have to worry about it ...

New comment by smallstepforman in "WinUI 3 Performance: A Leap Forward"

smallstepforman — Thu, 14 May 2026 22:31:17 +0000

Well, they could have had BeOS instead of NeXTStep.

New comment by smallstepforman in "sRGB profile comparison"

smallstepforman — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:26:37 +0000

No mention of 601, BT709, BT2020, BT2100 etc. He did mention the P and D profiles. Unorm vs linear.

There is always a historic reason for a colour profile, sadly most software avoids terminology like the plague.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Mo RAM, Mo Problems (2025)"

smallstepforman — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:09:51 +0000

That was a PPC603/604 limitation if you wanted multi CPU’s.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Rust Memory Management: Ownership vs. Reference Counting"

smallstepforman — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:17:59 +0000

Ref counting is for ownership, it doesnt convey intent. It kind of accidently works but is the wrong abstraction, especially in code bases where ownership is known.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Rust Memory Management: Ownership vs. Reference Counting"

smallstepforman — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 11:05:24 +0000

This is all well and dandy for some usage scenarios but breaks in others, eg. scene graphs and GUI's.

A scene graph needs 2 mutable references, and has nothing to do with ownership. Same issue exists with GUI's. The pattern that Rust forces is to always request a reference, which incurs a performance penalty while retrieving the same reference again and again and again.

New comment by smallstepforman in "The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code"

smallstepforman — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:27:22 +0000

We humans cannot scan 100’000 articles looking for the golden nugget, the AI data mining can do it and present it in seconds. Obviously we need to verify the data.

A couple of decades ago, we didnt trust compilers, we did assembly manually. Today is same barrier, some developers will explode with productivity while others will be left behind.

New comment by smallstepforman in "The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code"

smallstepforman — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:09:29 +0000

Every year they grant prizes. If hardly anyone is doing core R&D because of cost cutting, there is a higher chance those doing the smallest amount of R&D get the prizes.

A Nobel in 2026 doesnt carry the same weight as a Nobel in 1955.

New comment by smallstepforman in "What async promised and what it delivered"

smallstepforman — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 04:26:01 +0000

Its the stack space allocated to each thread that prevents you from spawning more than a thousand threads. Strategies like a thread per network connection do not scale.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Framework Laptop 13 Pro"

smallstepforman — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 21:34:34 +0000

Who watches Netflix at 30% brightness? Another useless marketing blurb, really puts me off from reading the rest.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989"

smallstepforman — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 06:06:30 +0000

5 sins in 1992: - 8 bit planar instead of chunky - progressive display (vs interlaced) - sound was not 16-bit - should have been 68030 with mmu support (vs 68020ec) - HD mandatory.

If they addressed this, the Doom experience would have run better on Amiga.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"

smallstepforman — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 09:50:08 +0000

At 27”, 2560x1440 withouth scaling is your better option vs UHD and x2 scaling. You need a pair of screens for true bliss.

New comment by smallstepforman in "Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall"

smallstepforman — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:05:01 +0000

Haiku package system has an unparalleled installstion, deletion, boot into previous states, data integrity (read only packages) and dealing with conflicting library policy. Its a technical crime that other systems are not copying Haiku packages … they’re several decades behind. IOS is half way there …

New comment by smallstepforman in "C++26 is done: ISO C++ standards meeting Trip Report"

smallstepforman — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:31:31 +0000

In the Linux world and even Haiku, there is a standard package dependacy format, so dependencies aren’t really a problem. Even OSX has Homebrew. Windows is the odd man out.

New comment by smallstepforman in "The bee that everyone wants to save"

smallstepforman — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:49:34 +0000

As with all things commercial, my neighbour keeps 40 hives and extracts too much honey in the autumn, resulting in desperate hungry bees in the spring that get very aggressive. If he left them more honey (less profits), they wouldnt be as hungry or aggressive. The entire neighbourhood suffers due to the antics of a single owner. Legally, he’s within the council regulations so there is nothing we can do … Its impossible to sit outside from 9am-6pm in April and May. Once there is enough food, they calm down.