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Surely I Am Joking

Personal blog · yinwang0.wordpress.comprogrammingphilosophysystems

Surely I Am Joking is a personal blog at yinwang0.wordpress.com about programming, philosophy and systems. Since 2012, 33 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “Ydiff: Structural Comparison of Programs”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.

Visit the blog
39mentions?
33HN people?
2012–2023first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 15 in 2013

Most-linked posts?

  1. Ydiff: Structural Comparison of Programs
    5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-05-30
  2. PySonar: an Advanced Static Analyzer for Python
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-08-12
  3. Scheme benchmarking with a meta-circular interpreter
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-12
  4. Back to the future of databases
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-29
  5. Purely Functional Languages and Monads
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-20

What Hacker News says?

  1. turingbook · 2013-11-26
    It seems that the author has deleted the original article and posted a reply to critical comments from Haskell school: https://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/oop-fp/ And some content of the original article was posted to: https://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/pure-fp-and-monads...

    Comment linking /2013/11/16/pure-fp-and-monads/

    on “What's wrong with Object-Oriented Programming and Functional Programming”
  2. roguelynn · 2013-11-12

    Submitted What's wrong with Object-Oriented Programming and Functional Programming as a story · 227 points

    HN discussion
  3. j-kidd · 2012-08-12
    Thanks for sharing. The first article is really interesting. The author worked 3 months as an intern at Google, and his much under-appreciated works saved Steve Yegge's Grok team that has been struggling for years. EDIT: Found another gem from the same author: http://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/reinvent-y/ > Today I found that I forgot how to derive the defintion of the Y combinator. I learned it several years…

    Comment linking /2012/04/09/reinvent-y/

    on “Steve Yegge and Grok”
  4. roquin · 2013-05-25

    Submitted Ydiff: Structural Comparison of Programs as a story · 176 points

    HN discussion
  5. wsxiaoys · 2012-08-12
    hmm interesting, just read another article on Grok yesterday posted by a previous intern of that team. (sadly it's in Chinese, but it covered the detail of Python Indexer's implementation) http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5d90e82f010191rh.html EDIT: Another article on the analyzer by this author, in English. http://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/pysonar/

    Comment linking /2010/09/12/pysonar/

    on “Steve Yegge and Grok”
  6. joeyespo · 2014-07-13

    Submitted On Swift’s array semantics as a story · 89 points

    HN discussion
  7. captainmuon · 2014-04-14
    > The way you've asked this it will lead people to think you're asking for very powerful static checking That's exactly what I'm asking for :-). It should be possible to create restricted types that are checked at runtime. For example, the fabs function would return a float which is guaranteed to be >= 0. The sqrt function would require the argument to be positive. float x; ... // arbitrary code sqrt(x); // warning,…

    Comment linking /2010/09/12/pysonar/

    on “Try Idris”
  8. soegaard · 2014-01-12

    Submitted Scheme benchmarking with a meta-circular interpreter as a story · 25 points

    HN discussion
  9. gus_massa · 2015-03-31
    Too late, someone already did that and measured the overhead of up to five interpretations layers: "Scheme benchmarking with a meta-circular" interpreter http://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/scheme-benchmarking... Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20140105145428/https://yinwang0.w... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7045734 (25 points, 443 days ago, 9 comments) (The main critic is that it sh…

    Comment linking /2013/11/04/scheme-benchmarking/

    on “Implement a programming language from scratch”
  10. z3t1 · 2016-11-27

    Submitted Why self-driving cars are not going to happen as a story · 16 points

    HN discussion
  11. yinwang0 · 2012-06-03
    Hey, glad you are working on this. I have later given a talk on structural version control together with demos of structural editing and ydiff. Here are the slides: http://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/structural-version-... I think structural version control can open lots of possibilities that are not accessible by text-base version control systems. I'm not really focused on this area, but I'd be happen to to s…

    Comment linking /2012/02/12/structural-version-control

    on “Ask HN: What are you Building?”
  12. handsomegui · 2013-10-30

    Submitted PySonar: an Advanced Static Analyzer for Python as a story · 13 points

    HN discussion
  13. tikhonj · 2012-05-30
    I'm working on what I call "semantic version control". Namely, instead of diffing and merging text, the goal is to parse the program and diff/merge the AST. EDIT: A better way to state the goal: I want to take advantage of the underlying structure of a computer program to inform the diff/merge. The first step just happens to be diffing ASTs, but I go beyond this. I already have some neat features--for example, I can…

    Comment linking /2012/01/03/ydiff/

    on “Ask HN: What are you Building?”
  14. mimighost · 2014-05-01

    Submitted Back to the future of databases as a story · 9 points

    HN discussion
  15. roryokane · 2013-11-03
    Another structural-editing tool is ydiff ( http://yinwang0.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/ydiff/ ), which can display structural diffs between JavaScript files. Demo: http://www.yinwang.org/resources/nav1-nav2.html

    Comment linking /2012/01/03/ydiff/

    on “Grasp: Structural Search and Replace for JavaScript”
  16. beering · 2012-05-18

    Submitted Google, a harmonious society as a story · 5 points

    HN discussion
  17. joeyespo · 2016-03-22

    Submitted Why self-driving cars are doomed as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  18. joeyespo · 2013-05-29

    Submitted Back to the Future of Databases as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion
  19. yzh · 2019-11-06

    Submitted There is no human-level computer vision as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  20. joeyespo · 2016-01-17

    Submitted Some observations about Tesla’s Autopilot as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  21. eipi · 2012-09-14

    Submitted Diffing code by program structure (not by text) as a story · 3 points

    HN discussion
  22. danny00 · 2023-03-20

    Submitted Sum Types and Union Types as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  23. islon · 2022-12-30

    Submitted Indentation-based syntax considered troublesome (2011) as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  24. pkd · 2017-03-30

    Submitted Why is indexing faster than binary search? as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  25. joeyespo · 2014-04-24

    Submitted RubySonar: a static analyzer for Ruby as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  26. AndreyKarpov · 2013-12-30

    Submitted Tests and static analysis as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  27. robrenaud · 2013-07-07

    Submitted PyDiff: a structural comparison tool for Python as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  28. jingkaimori · 2021-06-11

    Submitted My New Book: Ground-Up Computer Science as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  29. pmoriarty · 2016-06-09

    Submitted PySonar: a type inferencer and indexer for Python as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  30. brianchu · 2014-05-11

    Submitted Back to the future of databases as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion

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