Top all-time · #834
Chris Double
Personal blog · bluishcoder.co.nzprogrammingsystems
Chris Double writes Bluish Coder, a personal blog at bluishcoder.co.nz about programming and systems. Since 2007, 77 different Hacker News readers have linked it 186 times, most often “Namecoin - A DNS alternative based on Bitcoin [guide]”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 6 of 37 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Chris Double's blog for its series on the ATS language, posts on Factor, Pony and reference capabilities, and Lisp and safe-C programming experiments.
- Recommended for · 6 comments
- Called a good introduction to reference capabilities, worth reading, a series of pure gold, the most accessible introduction to ATS, nice posts on exploring a l
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 37 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Programming Languages, Martials Arts and Computers. The Weblog of Chris Double.
Most-linked posts?
- Namecoin - A DNS alternative based on Bitcoin [guide]4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-05-14
- /tags/ats/index.html3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-04-01
- Linking and calling Rust functions from C3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-08-08
- /2012/08/30/safer-handling-of-c-memory-in-ats.html2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-08-22
- /tags/ats/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-08-22
- /tags/ats/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-01-22
- Ranged integer types and bounds checking2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-05-08
- /2012/08/30/safer-handling-of-c-memory-in-ats.html2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-01-13
- Borrowing Internal Pointers in ATS2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-28
- Parser Combinators in JS2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-03-17
What Hacker News says?
Definitely going to binge watch soon. I have thought of using Redox and writing my own tools. An obsucre OS, but still running across interent/ethernet...oh, wait, spawn a drone node on a Windows machine using MOSREF/Wasp Lisp in Rust or Shen (shout out to doublec/sdunlop!) [1,2] [1] https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/02/19/spawning-windows-comman... [2] https://github.com/doublec/shen-wasp/releases/tag/v0.8
Comment linking /2015/02/19/spawning-windows-commands-in-wasp-lisp-and-mosref.html
on “Thinkpad X210”Submitted Using Freenet as a story · 128 points
HN discussionI have written a single javascript program in my life, and it was an emulator for an 8080-based machine. I used https://bluishcoder.co.nz/js8080/ for that part of the emulator, though I had to make some changes to it. I found the emulator ran 4x faster on firefox than on chrome. The culprit was the main dispatch loop, a 256-entry switch statement. Chrome used a slow fall-back path because there were too many cases.…
Comment linking /js8080/
on “The Baseline Interpreter: A Faster JavaScript Interpreter in Firefox 70”Submitted Preventing heartbleed bugs with safe programming languages as a story · 116 points
HN discussion> We can equally well say that that "Rust formally verifies your safe functions", and that this reduces how much code review is required... it's a matter of degree and specifics. You cannot say that while this kind of CVE is possible https://gts3.org/2019/cve-2018-1000657.html and as long as Rust is not capable of performing safe pointer manipulations. The above issue may be solved for VecDeque in stdlib, but what a…
Comment linking /2017/02/22/borrowing-internal-poin..
on “Supporting Linux kernel development in Rust”Submitted A Quick Look at the Rust Programming Language as a story · 98 points
HN discussion> No, adding unsafe Rust does not undermine the safety argument But it does, see my answer in the thread below regarding ring buffers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337184 > Is this not also true of ATS? That is, if ATS code calls a C function that returns a pointer, how do you know how long that pointer is valid for and whether you're expected to free it? the C implementation needs to be known, then the s…
Comment linking /2012/08/30/safer-handling-of-c-memory-in-ats.html
on “Supporting Linux kernel development in Rust”Submitted ZeroMe – Decentralized Microblogging on ZeroNet as a story · 79 points
HN discussionIt's moving the goal posts and changing the point of the discussion. We can equally well say that that "Rust formally verifies your safe functions", and that this reduces how much code review is required... it's a matter of degree and specifics. Focusing on pointer manipulations is also misleading: it's entirely true that it's dangerous, but most Rust code does not need to do any sort of raw pointer manipulation. Fo…
Comment linking /2017/02/22/borrowing-internal-pointers-in-ats.html
on “Supporting Linux kernel development in Rust”Submitted Contributing to Servo as a story · 79 points
HN discussion> language that is as similar to Python as possible without requiring a global lock Something like Pony[0] or Nim[1]? I'm not very familiar with either one, but Nim says it is inspired by Python, and on the surface Pony appears to be as well. [0] https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/11/04/a-quick-look-at-pony.ht... [1] https://nim-lang.org/features.html
Comment linking /2015/11/04/a-quick-look-at-pony.html
on “Let's Remove the Global Interpreter Lock”Submitted Phantom Types in Rust as a story · 75 points
HN discussionYou are doing yourself a great service by learning Scheme - that can fundamentally change how you think about programming. Reading the first chapter of SICP[0] will change you forever. Yet right now you're using Scheme as a Python/C/Ruby with a strange syntax, while it's a totally different language with its own idioms. You should learn them to master Scheme. As for your particular questions: 1. map yields an error…
Comment linking /jsscheme/
on “Why 37signals Doesn't Hire Programmers Based on Brainteasers”Submitted Exploring 3-Move – A LambdaMOO inspired environment as a story · 74 points
HN discussionIt's funny you mention that because I've been collecting those Frama-C, SPARK, and WhyML papers in case anyone wants to port examples between languages. One of the things I [re-]downloaded a week or two ago for that was ACSL by Example. :) I also got floating point verification (I know you all are doing that), one on string functions, and one on GMP for big integers. I don't have any of it published in an online rep…
Comment linking /2017/04/27/installing-gnat-and-spark-gpl-editions.html
on “Mathematics for Computer Science: Readings”Submitted Casting in ATS as a story · 48 points
HN discussionFreenet can be run through Tor using Onioncat as a virtual network. [0] [0] https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2016/08/18/using-freenet-over-tor....
Comment linking /2016/08/18/using-freenet-over-tor.html
on “Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication”Submitted Revisiting Alice ML as a story · 47 points
HN discussionBoth ZeroNet and Freenet have decentralized forums. Freenet's forum is called FMS. They have decentralized microblogging too - ZeroMe on ZeroNet and Sone on Freenet. This is a post I wrote about ZeroNet's decentralized microblogging: https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2017/10/12/zerome-decentralized-mi...
Comment linking /2017/10/12/zerome-decentralized-microblogging-on-zeronet.html
on “Brave files adtech complaint against Google”Submitted Prototype Based Programming Languages as a story · 46 points
HN discussionInferno [1] can run hosted and gives a lot of the Plan 9 feel. You might find it useful if you're wanting to try it out. It might even run on your phone [2]. [1] http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/ [2] http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2012/06/11/building-inferno-os-...
Comment linking /2012/06/11/building-inferno-os-for-android-phones.html
on “UsesThis: Rob Pike”Submitted Defining Types in Shen as a story · 42 points
HN discussionHere are a bunch of blogs from my RSS reader that I think are worth reading. Some of them haven't updated in a while, but the archives may be worth a look anyway. * Blogs with a math focus: http://blog.sigfpe.com http://bit-player.org http://mathr.co.uk/blog/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/ * Blogs with a programming languages focus: https://existentialtype.wordpress.com https://bluishcoder.co.nz http://blog.ezyang.…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you follow?”Submitted Wasp Lisp - a Small Scheme-like Lisp as a story · 31 points
HN discussionDecentralized microblogging using Sone, the twitter-like system on Freenet. Freemail, the encrypted email system. FMS, the forums. I also use the distributed data store for storing data. Basically anything you'd use IPFS for but more anonymity. Here's an example of using it for the backing store for my blog: https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/09/14/using-freenet-for-stati... Here's a series of articles on writing dynami…
Comment linking /2015/09/14/using-freenet-for-static-websites.html
on “Our 2016 Open Source Donations”Submitted Building Rust as a story · 28 points
HN discussionOP is referring to http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/03/24/contributing-to-servo.ht...
Comment linking /2015/03/24/contributing-to-servo.html
on “Servo Continues Pushing Forward”Submitted WebM Decoder in Flash using Alchemy as a story · 26 points
HN discussionThe reversibility of Prolog computations was a big eye opener for me too back when I first encountered it. I recently wrote a post about relational programming using Prolog and Mozart/Oz as examples https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2017/03/20/relational-programming-... Another interesting language in the same domain is Picat http://picat-lang.org/
Comment linking /2017/03/20/relational-programming-in-mozart-oz.html
on “The Power of Prolog”Submitted Firefox Media Source Extensions Update as a story · 24 points
HN discussion
