Hacker News: ulbu

New comment by ulbu in "Zig’s Io.Threaded is neat"

ulbu — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 15:38:21 +0000

but zig has no ternaries, so it does not apply to a discussion about zig’s syntax.

and ternary is a branch with no variable introduction, so it doesn’t apply again.

(it’s basically a weak switch expression, and the value moves leftwards towards its invocation.)

New comment by ulbu in "Zig’s Io.Threaded is neat"

ulbu — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 09:08:05 +0000

if |result| (evaluation)

New comment by ulbu in "Zig’s Io.Threaded is neat"

ulbu — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 07:02:32 +0000

|capture| hides an inconsistency that bugs me – everywhere else, assignment to a variable flows leftwards. |capture| is an unnatural rightwards assignment.

in general, I like zig syntax, but i find that it had very little regard to how the eye moves on the page. it’s jarring at times.

New comment by ulbu in "Red Programming Language: Static linking support"

ulbu — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:51:47 +0000

I think they mean red as a shell scripting/command line language.

New comment by ulbu in "European digital ID wallets are a gift to Google and Apple"

ulbu — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:51:48 +0000

or “sometimes not, until more data arrives”.

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

ulbu — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 17:04:15 +0000

it’s little-endian protocols that require that you juggle your struct fields.

plus, there are still big-endian protocols that will stay for a long time. for example, MIDI clip files in MIDI 2.0 are big-endian.

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

ulbu — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:06:23 +0000

C3 is a contender to C++ because of its namespace operator?

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

ulbu — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:31:26 +0000

you need different packed structs for little- and big-endian data. and casting with little-endian data is a nightmare - you need to reverse-cascade your struct fields to be in accordance with the little-endian bit-pattern. (or have a comptime function that does it for you, of course. but then you lose all declarations for the struct). what should be a simple writing down of a protocol is now a pedantic and error-prone ordeal.

New comment by ulbu in "LuaJIT 3.0 proposed syntax extensions"

ulbu — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:47:58 +0000

well, it doesn’t say Lua5.1-JIT

New comment by ulbu in "New pancreatic cancer drug might open the door to much longer survival times"

ulbu — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 01:10:21 +0000

evolution is a wrong concept to approach it. cancer is not a separate life form, but a bug in the regeneration system of a complicated life form. it doesn’t exist outside of it, it cannot propagate.

New comment by ulbu in "Zig Zen Update"

ulbu — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 11:30:36 +0000

Excuse me, but I think zig grows ever better from driving away users who are driven away by flashy headlines and whatever is the opposite of this “activism” you suggest.

New comment by ulbu in "Zig Zen Update"

ulbu — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 11:25:48 +0000

the green is from moving the line

New comment by ulbu in "Zig: Build System Reworked"

ulbu — Sat, 30 May 2026 12:22:43 +0000

bun seems to be committed to slop rust already. so, with their ethic, maybe we should just disassociate them from zig and let them go realize their slop dreams?

zig is on its way to improving compilation times in its own pace and does so for the benefit of the project and everyone involved, so what is left to care for about bun by anthropic’s past?

New comment by ulbu in "Zig: Build System Reworked"

ulbu — Sat, 30 May 2026 12:11:40 +0000

the “(super) efficient” is not there yet. Io is still dynamic dispatch with multiple layers of indirection. afaik it’s slower than before.

the upcoming releases are expected to provide a solution to this “dispatch is comptime-known, but still dynamic” problem, and drop the loses in efficiency.

New comment by ulbu in "Claude Opus 4.8"

ulbu — Fri, 29 May 2026 12:21:10 +0000

I propose GRIM: Generative Recursive Indeterministic Impression Machine.

New comment by ulbu in "Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis"

ulbu — Wed, 27 May 2026 22:14:33 +0000

this comment sounds so ironic in the context of a discussion pertaining to llms

New comment by ulbu in "Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis"

ulbu — Wed, 27 May 2026 22:09:43 +0000

or pain perception

New comment by ulbu in "I keep bouncing off the Scheme language"

ulbu — Sun, 24 May 2026 15:27:23 +0000

scheme is great, but the dx of some implementations is not. i’m on guile scheme due to guix, and frankly, i’m hating it a quite bit.

stack traces are esoteric and error messages entirely unhelpful,

documentation masquerades as deep but is indeed inconsistent and prosaic, mixing styles of reference, explanation, and how-to willy-nilly, (compare with Dybvig’s The Scheme Programming Language, which is focused and consistent, and it takes no time to get your answers; there’s just no method to guile and guix manuals), i hate it big time,

there’s big gaps in documentation (especially with Guix – there’s literally zero information about `define-record-type*` which is used everywhere in its codebase; admittedly, not scheme related, but still),

the cli requires too much memorization,

most modules are not named, but numbered, ie, instead of something like `(base list)`, you get `(srfi srfi-1)`, so you need to either memorize, or go through the info pages for each procedure you need to import, which means you also need to know the exact names for the procedures you need beforehand,

there’s like 4 ways to define a record, each with a different feature set and incompatibilities,

etc.

these are the reasons i find it hard to use.

to respond to the content of the article, the different neurotype idea is off, because scheme allows you very well to express sequences of operations; the ecosystem of APIs may not cater to this tho. although if it was rephrased into “scheme emphasizes symbolic manipulations, as opposed to operating a machine”, i would agree

New comment by ulbu in "Fender escalates legal campaign against S-style guitars"

ulbu — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:51:45 +0000

how is guitar shape a trademark?

edit: thanks for the responses!

New comment by ulbu in "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry"

ulbu — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:04:18 +0000

that’s why we say that with such discoveries we receive a new way – of looking, of doing, of thinking… these new paths preexist in the abstract, but they can be taken only when they’ve been opened. and that is as good as anything “new” gets. (and such discoveries are often also inventions, for to open them, a ruse is needed to be applied in a specific way for the way to open).