Top all-time · #880
Jussi Pakkanen
Personal blog · nibblestew.blogspot.comprogrammingsystems
Jussi Pakkanen writes Nibble Stew, a personal blog at nibblestew.blogspot.com about programming and systems. Since 2016, 74 different Hacker News readers have linked it 245 times, most often “Statement is 100% correct but misses the entire point”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (25) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Jussi Pakkanen's blog as a rebuttal or reference on claims about programming languages, C++ exceptions and build systems, especially 'It's not what programming languages do, it's what they shepherd you to'.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Called useful for understanding a point, one commenter said it would make you 'a little wiser', and another said to use it instead of a performance-comparison l
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 25 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A gathering of development thoughts of Jussi Pakkanen. Some of you may know him as the creator of the Meson build system. jpakkane at gmail dot com
Most-linked posts?
- Statement is 100% correct but misses the entire point6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-04-11
- The road to hell is paved with good intentions and C++ modules (2023)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-10-15
- It's not what programming languages do, it's what they shepherd you to4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-03-26
- An uncomfortable but necessary discussion about the Debian bug tracker4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-12-22
- Implementing a “mini-LaTeX” in ~2000 lines of code3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-07-31
- C and C++ dependencies: don't dream it, be it3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-07
- In C++ modules globally unique module names seem to be unavoidable3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-09-28
- Rewriting from scratch, should you do it?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-04-24
- /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html?m=13 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-04
- On the scalability of C++ module implementations or lack thereof3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-16
What Hacker News says?
All of that sounds good in theory until we reach this point: > Looking for good software engineering advice? Do the same thing with developers. Which brings us back to the OP: > Most tech content is bullshit So we've now come full circle. Hence I would point you to another post that came out recently that would be useful to understand what you wrote: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...
Comment linking /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html
on “Most tech content is bullshit”Submitted Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000 as a story · 792 points
HN discussionYour statement is 100% correct but misses the entire point https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...
Comment linking /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html?m=1
on “Improving DNS Privacy with Oblivious DoH”Submitted It's not what programming languages do, it's what they shepherd you to as a story · 493 points
HN discussionReminds me of this post: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/03/its-not-what-program... In the case of java though in my opinion the problems start at the std library that sometimes forces you to write really inefficient code, or reimplement everything yourself.
Comment linking /2020/03/its-not-what-programming-languages-do.html?m=1
on ““I am literally losing sleep” over Java (1996)”Submitted Most “mandatory requirements” in corporations are imaginary as a story · 469 points
HN discussionI leave this for you without comment: http://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-100...
Comment linking /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html
on “Malleable Systems: Software must be as easy to change as it is to use it”Submitted Your statement is correct but misses the point as a story · 442 points
HN discussionThis reply frustrated me to the core. This isn't a parenting website. The advice you gave is a parenting one, and bad, at that. The story could have just been concocted for the benefit of understanding the urgency of the situation. You should probably read this: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10... It'll make you a little wiser. As to why your reply frustrated me? I think the internet is o…
Comment linking /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html?m=1
on “Show HN: Virus Cafe – Make a friend in 2 minutes”Submitted A personal story about 10× development as a story · 289 points
HN discussionhttps://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...
Comment linking /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html?m=1
on “Show HN: Virus Cafe – Make a friend in 2 minutes”Submitted What to do with C++ modules? as a story · 226 points
HN discussion> In my experience with language design, a little bit of syntactic sugar can have transformative results. I agree 100%. This also reminds me of this article: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/03/its-not-what-program... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22696229
Comment linking /2020/03/its-not-what-programming-languages-do.html
on “C’s Biggest Mistake (2009)”Submitted Let's properly analyze an AI article for once as a story · 226 points
HN discussionAuthor asserts that "The decoupling between raising of the exception and handling it, that makes avoiding failures so easy in C++, makes it virtually impossible to guarantee that the program never runs info undefined behaviour." (and all the woes he encounters afterwards stems from trying to avoid exceptions due to that assertion). But that is not my experience at all. Exceptions are much more reliable than error co…
Comment linking /2017/01/measuring-execution-performance-of-c.html
on “Why should I have written ZeroMQ in C, not C++ (2012)”Submitted It's not what programming languages do, it's what they shepherd you to (2020) as a story · 219 points
HN discussionThe definition of zero-cost abstractions, as introduced in C++, was that "it can't be slower that code than the equivalent hand-written code" (e.g. code not using the abstraction). In that regard, exceptions are interesting as if you're on the happy path (which should be 99.999% of the time - a normal program that uses exceptions as error handling method should not encounter any exception if you do a `catch throw` o…
Comment linking /2017/01/measuring-execution-performance-of-c.html
on “When zero cost abstractions aren't zero cost”Submitted Questions to ask a prospective employer during a job interview as a story · 200 points
HN discussionhttps://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...
Comment linking /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html
on “On 17th century "cocaine"”Submitted That time when I accidentally social engineered myself to a film set as a story · 152 points
HN discussionWe get it. You already made this comment: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2022/07/that-time-when-i-acc... The author responded: > In case it was not obvious from the text, I did not do either of these things. No-one else should either.
Comment linking /2022/07/that-time-when-i-accidentally-social.html?showComment=1659041721982
on “That time when I accidentally social engineered myself to a film set”Submitted The joys of creating Xcode project files as a story · 150 points
HN discussionThere's another post explaining why Meson is trying to do what it is trying to do. My takeaway was that having a single universal build system is easier to deal with than multiple splintered ones, full of duplicated effort: http://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-possible-futures-o...
Comment linking /2019/02/on-possible-futures-of-meson.html
on “Rust is not a good C replacement”Submitted Writing your own C++ standard library from scratch as a story · 146 points
HN discussionThere's a blog post diving more into the details of language cooperation from Meson's perspective here: http://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2019/02/why-is-cross-language...
Comment linking /2019/02/why-is-cross-language-cooperation-so.html
on “Rust is not a good C replacement”Submitted Don’t use environment variables for configuration as a story · 140 points
HN discussionThis boils down to "just don't do undefined behavior". It's 100% correct and misses the point entirely.[1] 1: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2020/04/your-statement-is-10...
Comment linking /2020/04/your-statement-is-100-correct-but.html
on “Curl is C (2017)”Submitted Why don't you just rewrite it in X? as a story · 137 points
HN discussion> And for that one, exceptions as they are today are often faster than the equivalent error-code-based code: https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2017/01/measuring-execution- ... The example on that blog post is not representative of how error codes are used. On all programming languages, C included, but also Rust, functions return a completion value that's either success, or error (and when its error, it includes which…
Comment linking /2017/01/measuring-execution-
on “Is C++ Doomed?”Submitted Comparing C and C++ usage and performance with a real world project as a story · 118 points
HN discussion
