Hacker News: z_open

New comment by z_open in "It's OK to compare floating-points for equality"

z_open — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:10:07 +0000

Why is that NaN handling sensible? I don't think it makes sense to say log(-1) equals log(-2). Mathematically it isn't true and your implementation would say it's true only because of limitations in IEEE754.

New comment by z_open in "C++26: `Std:Optional`"

z_open — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:19:27 +0000

The assign operator rebinding is yet another thing that behaves slightly different from the rest of the language.

New comment by z_open in "Elements of C Style (1994)"

z_open — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 10:36:31 +0000

Lots of bad advice. Using unsigned for normal integers when you know they will be positive does worse for optimization, not better. Also for (;;) {} is convention because older compilers would give warnings with while (1)

I stopped reading there.

New comment by z_open in "UTF-8 is a brilliant design"

z_open — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 17:15:25 +0000

kill Unicode. Done with this after these 25 byte single characters.

New comment by z_open in "Microsoft PowerToys"

z_open — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 11:53:52 +0000

I wish I could find the pull request associated with that issue.

New comment by z_open in "Microsoft PowerToys"

z_open — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:48:18 +0000

Tried it and realized it was gimped compared to the Linux tools it was trying to emulate. Monopolies will always be playing catchup with basic functionalities people have done for free because they make sense.

New comment by z_open in "Things you can do with a debugger but not with print debugging"

z_open — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 06:57:13 +0000

printing is never the appropriate tool. You can make your debugger print something when that line of code is reached anyway and automatically continue if you want. So what's the point of pritntf? It's just less information and features.

New comment by z_open in "Notes on Programming in C by Rob Pike"

z_open — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 10:08:33 +0000

Not this article again. His opinions on include files don't make sense anymore. Modern compilers keep track of what includes are necessary to reprocess.

New comment by z_open in "Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android"

z_open — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 10:57:11 +0000

What the hell do the antitrust people in the US do? Google should have been chopped to bits a decade ago and Microsoft buying Github is just nonsense. Way too much potential for abuse all around.

New comment by z_open in "Microsoft calls protest a 'destructive' act by outsiders"

z_open — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 11:19:25 +0000

They're not acting like idiots though?

And they're trying to raise awareness that Microsoft helps Israel surveil and attack Palestinians, not raise awareness that there is a war going on.

Your comment is a typical one that protests should be less disruptive, but only disruptive protests have historically been effective.

New comment by z_open in "Zig's Lovely Syntax"

z_open — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 17:34:13 +0000

Even if we ignore solutions other languages have come up with, it's even worse that they landed on // for the syntax given that it's apparently used the same way for real comments.

New comment by z_open in "Zig's Lovely Syntax"

z_open — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 17:18:41 +0000

> Raw or multiline strings are spelled like this:

    const still_raw =
        \\const raw =
        \\    \\Roses are red
        \\    \\  Violets are blue,
        \\    \\Sugar is sweet
        \\    \\  And so are you.
        \\    \\
        \\;
        \\
    ;

This syntax seems fairly insane to me.

New comment by z_open in "Show HN: Whittle – A shrinking word game"

z_open — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 18:49:29 +0000

I had the same issue. I went back to the calendar and it said I got 100% of the words. So I guess it's not always possible and I spent all that time trying for no reason.

New comment by z_open in "Ask HN: What change enabled you to consistently finish your side projects?"

z_open — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 18:20:32 +0000

Not a great answer but finish them broken. If they're just for me and/or my company, document when they fail and be done with it. If it's documented then it's not a bug

New comment by z_open in "Design patterns you should unlearn in Python"

z_open — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 17:14:12 +0000

He didn't mention the worst pattern, the visitor pattern, which has extremely few use cases.

New comment by z_open in "Carbon Language: An experimental successor to C++"

z_open — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 20:54:34 +0000

Are all major programming languages going to come from corporations in web 2.0?

New comment by z_open in "Lisp project of the day"

z_open — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 14:51:29 +0000

printf("x = %6d\ny = %.8E\n", x, y) ;

What's the equivalent lisp?

New comment by z_open in "How to increase your surface area for luck"

z_open — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:28:55 +0000

Yeah I have always wondered about the success rate for self help books. Seems like the people who need it have an inherent problem using it.

New comment by z_open in "Self-imposed ban – a lightweight bash script to block commands"

z_open — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 16:11:57 +0000

I am. Every time I cd I ls even though I know what's in there.

New comment by z_open in "C++: Maps on Chains"

z_open — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 07:52:35 +0000

Throwing a runtime error seems like an absurd solution compared to changing the comparison operator or using an unordered_map

What's wrong with x.min < y.min || (x. min == y.min && x.max < y. max)