Top all-time · #1017
Julio Merino
Personal blog · jmmv.dev · on HN as jmmvsystemsprogramming
Julio Merino's personal blog at jmmv.dev covers systems and programming. Since 2020, 65 different Hacker News readers have linked it 183 times, most often “Fast machines, slow machines (2023)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (20) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Julio Merino's posts on the performance of old versus modern software, Windows NT and WSL, macOS sandbox-exec, and shell scripting. Most links are cited as support for other points.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter calls the WSL 'lost potential' post a decent look at the topic.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 20 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Julio Merino’s blog. A blog on operating systems, programming languages, testing, build systems, my own software projects and even personal productivity. Specifics include FreeBSD, Linux, Rust, Bazel and EndBASIC.
Most-linked posts?
- Fast machines, slow machines (2023)10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2023-06-27
- Good performance is not just big O7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2023-09-08
- Ldd(1) and Untrusted Binaries (2023)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-07-02
- Always Be Quitting4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-06-09
- Configuration Files and .d Directories4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-08-17
- Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-11-19
- Useless Use of GNU3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-08-27
- Speeding up autoconf with caching (2022)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-06-17
- rc.d belongs in libexec, not etc3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-08-24
- Unit-testing shell scripts and tools with shtk3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-10-11
What Hacker News says?
https://jmmv.dev/ This is my personal blog with a bit over 15 years of history by now :-) I blog about technical stuff primarily, including my open source work in projects like NetBSD, interesting/weird things about programming languages and Unix systems, opinions on coding, and lately even things I have done at work in the Bazel space. Thanks for reading!
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Always Be Quitting as a story · 691 points
HN discussionIt depends. Can Windows 3.11 be faster than Windows 11? Sure, maybe even in most cases: https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html
Comment linking /2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html
on “The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority”Submitted Windows Subsystem for Linux: The lost potential as a story · 362 points
HN discussionhttps://jmmv.dev/ I’ve been blogging since 2004 and the site has been hosted in LiveJournal, Blogger, brief experiment on Medium, Jekyll on GitHub Pages, and now Hugo on GitHub Pages as well (but planning to go to Netlifly). And because I see people talking about personal projects as well, I’ll also mention https://endbasic.dev/ which is also “a website” and is keeping my early mornings quite busy :)
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted From Azure Functions to FreeBSD as a story · 133 points
HN discussion> Also, WSL 2 always felt like a "cheat" to me... is anyone else disappointed they went full-on VM and abandoned the original approach? Oh yes, some of us are. This was a decent look: https://jmmv.dev/2020/11/wsl-lost-potential.html HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154300
Comment linking /2020/11/wsl-lost-potential.html
on “Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison”Submitted Fast machines, slow machines (2023) as a story · 105 points
HN discussionOP here. I did not touch upon CLI argument handling in this article because I wanted to focus on the kernel but this is indeed a big difference. And... I had written about this too :) https://jmmv.dev/2020/11/cmdline-args-unix-vs-windows.html
Comment linking /2020/11/cmdline-args-unix-vs-windows.html
on “Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison”Submitted rc.d belongs in libexec, not etc as a story · 70 points
HN discussionThat's right. I recently wrote on this topic: https://jmmv.dev/2020/10/powershell-cmdlet-params.html
Comment linking /2020/10/powershell-cmdlet-params.html
on “CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programs”Submitted Down the memory lane with OS/2 (2020) as a story · 68 points
HN discussionHah. This is a topic that's dear to my heart and have blogged occasionally about it... but never in such a comprehensive form. Great job! Now... I gotta read through everything. But... here is a series of blog posts in which I covered similar themes years ago: https://jmmv.dev/series.html#CLI%20design And here is another single post that touches upon a single guideline I came across while skimming through the text:…
Comment linking /2020/08/config-files-vs-directories.html
on “CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programs”Submitted Show HN: I've built my own simple website analytics as a story · 63 points
HN discussionThe second article has videos of more comparisons with different software on a greater variety of hardware: https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html The point is that the good old days aren't just pure nostalgia, some parts were genuinely good compared to modern bloated software.
Comment linking /2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html
on “Firefox Browser Ported to HaikuOS”Submitted Ldd(1) and Untrusted Binaries (2023) as a story · 59 points
HN discussionThe closest you're probably going to get is sandbox-exec https://jmmv.dev/2019/11/macos-sandbox-exec.html
Comment linking /2019/11/macos-sandbox-exec.html
on “Podman, the open source Docker alternative ported to M1 (Apple Silicon) machines”Submitted Why am I wasting time on EndBASIC? as a story · 57 points
HN discussionNice presentation and nice recap! A couple of observations from the text that resonate with me: * "Blogging helps me become a better writer, which in turns helps me become a better developer." Yes. Writing is super-important as a developer, particularly in a corporate setting, because communicating ideas clearly is critical in convincing others and in showing your contributions. And to be a better writer, well, one…
Comment linking /2024/06/20-years-of-blogging.html
on “Why I still blog after 15 years”Submitted Rust is hard, yes, but does it matter? as a story · 46 points
HN discussionNice. I wrote about a similar idea back in 2013 ( https://jmmv.dev/2013/07/readability-explicitly-state.html ) after I found that being explicit about all branches made my code easier to reason about and easier for reviewers to validate. Glad to find that this is “space shuttle style”! I’ve always disliked how the Go style insists on removing certain branches at the end of functions, for example.
Comment linking /2013/07/readability-explicitly-state.html
on “Please do not attempt to simplify this code”Submitted Test, [, and [[ as a story · 44 points
HN discussion> Grab a fucking profiler, it is more important than your Big O This is exactly why I wrote https://jmmv.dev/2023/09/performance-is-not-big-o.html a few years back. The focus on Big O during interviews is, I think, harmful.
Comment linking /2023/09/performance-is-not-big-o.html
on “FFmpeg Assembly Language Lessons”Submitted Unit-testing a console app as a story · 44 points
HN discussionHah. I thought I was the only silly person in 2017 purchasing an overpriced and not-so-powerful-at-the-time machine :) I got mine from eBay and it is still my daily driver! Mind you, just wrote this about a week ago on how I keep it current: https://jmmv.dev/2022/03/windows-10-mac-pro-2013.html
Comment linking /2022/03/windows-10-mac-pro-2013.html
on “iMac G4 to M1 conversion process”Submitted Should the browser use all available memory? as a story · 30 points
HN discussion> I think this looks incredible. Like how does one create a compatible abi _for all of linux_??? Wow! FWIW that’s what the Linux compatibility layer in the BSDs does and also what WSL 1 did ( https://jmmv.dev/2020/11/wsl-lost-potential.html ). It’s hard to get _everything_ perfectly right but not that difficult to get most of it working.
Comment linking /2020/11/wsl-lost-potential.html
on “Asterinas: OS kernel written in Rust and providing Linux-compatible ABI”Submitted Speeding up autoconf with caching (2022) as a story · 26 points
HN discussionFor those pesky random executables there's a couple of escape hatches -- buildFHSenv and nix-ld. This is also predicated on good provenance of the executables in question. One should probably not even ldd sketchy binaries: https://jmmv.dev/2023/07/ldd-untrusted-binaries.html
Comment linking /2023/07/ldd-untrusted-binaries.html
on “Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts”Submitted Constructors and evil initializers in C++ as a story · 22 points
HN discussion
