Top all-time · #1498
purplesyringa's blog
Personal blog · purplesyringa.moe/blogprogrammingsystems
purplesyringa's blog is a personal blog at purplesyringa.moe about programming and systems. Since 2024, 47 different Hacker News readers have linked it 102 times, most often “Thoughts on Rust Hashing”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-16, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for low-level programming write-ups, such as Bad Apple in Minecraft, float and libm quirks, and fast int-float conversion. One commenter singles out the author's humour.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- The author's sense of humour, illustrated with quoted lines about a slow prototype and an inefficient collision algorithm.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Thoughts on Rust Hashing5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-12-11
- If I hear "design pattern" one more time, I'll go mad5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-09-05
- Grieving the loss of details3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-24
- An Ode to Bzip3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-12
- The Expression Problem and Rust3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-09-30
- Ntoh*/hton* is a bad API3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-20
- WASM is not quite a stack machine2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-04-27
- Race-free handle inheritance, maybe2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-19
- Fenwick Layout for Interval Trees2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-10
- Any Python program fits in 30 characters2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-16
What Hacker News says?
Now I got curious, and there's also a 400 kB CSS file to go with it: https://purplesyringa.moe/fonts/webfont.css I'm not up to date on web/font development – does anybody know what that does?
Comment linking /fonts/webfont.css
on “WebP: The WebPage Compression Format”Submitted WebP: The WebPage Compression Format as a story · 552 points
HN discussionThat feeling seems common in hindsight. Everything seems easier, once all the problems have been solved. Related, I enjoy the author's sense of humor: > I made a prototype and, lo and behold, it was in fact slow, as predicted. (I’m smart.) And in another article[0], describing an inefficient collision algorithm: > Mojang’s decision never crossed my mind. I guess I’m not a real programmer. [0]: https://purplesyringa.…
Comment linking /blog/ru/minecraft-compares-arrays-in-cubic-time/
on ““Bad Apple” in Minecraft”Submitted Grieving the loss of details as a story · 506 points
HN discussionThere's definitely something afoot, and something of a schism. From the past 2 days alone: - https://purplesyringa.moe/blog/grieving-the-loss-of-details/ - https://www.autodidacts.io/vibecoding-isnt-as-fun-as-writing... - https://mondobe.com/ai-makes-me-sad - https://www.techspot.com/news/113937-engineer-claude-code-ha... I'm also pondering routes out. While there's a year until the next academic year starts for pos…
Comment linking /blog/grieving-the-loss-of-details/
on “Software developers are not okay”Submitted “Bad Apple” in Minecraft as a story · 406 points
HN discussionThank you! I completely agree with this, floats are treated as a lot more magical than they actually are. I myself often rely on their exact guarantees for fun tricks (e.g. fast precise int<->float conversion: https://purplesyringa.moe/blog/fast-limited-range-conversion... ). But while IEEE-754 is very precise, some subtleties arise when you add library functions to the mix -- many libm's and userland libraries don'…
Comment linking /blog/fast-limited-range-conversion-between-ints-and-floats/
on “Log is non-monotonic in PHP and Lua”Submitted I sped up serde_json strings by 20% as a story · 336 points
HN discussion> Then, when it fails [...], you can either poke it in the right ways or change your program in the right ways so that it works for you again. This is a horrible way to program; it’s all alchemy and guesswork and you need to become deeply specialized about the nuances of a single [...] implementation In that post, the blanks reference a compiler’s autovectorizer. But you know what they could also reference? An aggre…
Comment linking /blog/why-performance-optimization-is-hard-work/
on “I Don't Like Magic”Submitted Performance optimization is hard because it's fundamentally a brute-force task as a story · 303 points
HN discussionSubmitted Who is vfmaddrnd231pd? as a story · 254 points
HN discussionSubmitted The RAM Myth as a story · 196 points
HN discussionSubmitted JVM exceptions are weird: a decompiler perspective as a story · 166 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Look at Rust from 2012 as a story · 153 points
HN discussionSubmitted The NX bit is not just about security as a story · 106 points
HN discussionSubmitted Falsehoods programmers believe about null pointers as a story · 103 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bringing Faster Exceptions to Rust as a story · 103 points
HN discussionSubmitted JVM exceptions are weird: a decompiler perspective as a story · 91 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vectorized CLZ and CTZ as a story · 67 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't call yourself an artisanal programmer as a story · 57 points
HN discussionSubmitted Superoptimizing an FPU Emulator as a story · 44 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Rust Trademark Policy is still harmful as a story · 37 points
HN discussionSubmitted "AI discourse" is a joke as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Expression Problem and Rust as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Falsehoods programmers believe about null pointers as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted If I hear "design pattern" one more time, I'll go mad as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted If I hear "design pattern" one more time, I'll go mad as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Grieving the Loss of Details as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Write While Learning as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Quadrupling code performance with a "useless" if as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
