Hacker News with Generative AI: Software Design

Multi-threading is always the wrong design (2023) (medium.com)
Say what you want about Node.js. It sucks, a lot. But it was made with one very accurate observation: multithreading sucks even more.
Programming, Software Design, Node.js, Multithreading
33 points by gw2 3 days ago | 49 comments
John Ousterhout and Robert Martin Follow-Up to Aposd vs. Clean Code [video] (youtube.com)
Software Development, Programming, Best Practices, Software Design
17 points by funcimp 4 days ago | 0 comments
The Gang of Four is wrong and you don't understand delegation (2012) (saturnflyer.com)
The Gang of Four got it wrong. Ruby's standard library has it wrong. Rails has it wrong.
Programming, Software Design, Ruby, Object-Oriented Programming
28 points by Tomte 10 days ago | 54 comments
Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation (fastmail.com)
I don’t usually like to call out the bad behaviour of specific companies, but the egregious mis-design and lack of acknowledging it justify this case.
Email Security, User Experience, Online Dating, Software Design
129 points by brongondwana 14 days ago | 118 comments
Notes on structured concurrency, or: Go statement considered harmful (2018) (vorpus.org)
Every concurrency API needs a way to run code concurrently.
Concurrency, Programming Languages, Go, Software Design
6 points by HAMSHAMA 16 days ago | 1 comments
My 10 Commandments of Software Design (Inspired by John Ousterhout) (igbanam.com)
This should not have been a book — for many reasons — could as well have been a bullet list. The summary I have at the end of this article is the whole book. Skip there if you don’t care about my reasoning.
Software Design, Programming, Principles, Opinions, Books
9 points by nomilk 19 days ago | 3 comments
Great software design looks underwhelming (seangoedecke.com)
Years ago I spent a lot of time reviewing coding challenges. The challenge itself was very straightforward - building a CLI tool that hit an API and allowed the user to page through and inspect the data. We allowed any language, so I saw all kinds of approaches1. At one point I came across a challenge I thought was literally perfect.
Software Design, User Interface, Programming, Coding Challenges, API
102 points by pierremenard 28 days ago | 15 comments
Clean Code vs. A Philosophy Of Software Design (github.com/johnousterhout)
Software Design, Programming, Philosophy
488 points by recursivedoubts 39 days ago | 542 comments
Subverting Control with Weak References (jlongster.com)
Weak references are neat. The best language features unlock different kinds of abstractions, and weak references do exactly that. Let me show you why.
Programming, Software Design, Memory Management
5 points by gnabgib 39 days ago | 0 comments
John Ousterhout and Uncle Bob discuss John's disagreements with Clean Code (github.com/johnousterhout)
Software Development, Programming, Clean Code, Software Design
14 points by discreteevent 39 days ago | 2 comments
Every line is a potential bug (2009) (teamten.com)
Every line of code you write is a potential bug. Do not write any line of code unless you absolutely need it right now and your program will suffer for the lack of it. Do not write routines speculatively. Do not write abstraction layers you don’t need right now. If an optimization will add any complexity whatsoever, even a subtraction, resist it.
Software Development, Programming, Code Optimization, Software Design
55 points by ingve 40 days ago | 58 comments
Some Programming Language Ideas (davidbos.me)
This post is me writing down some ideas for programming languages or programming language features.
Programming Languages, Software Design
118 points by toteloader 42 days ago | 26 comments
Cargo Cult Programming (wikipedia.org)
Cargo cult programming is a style of computer programming characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose.
Programming, Software Development, Software Design
7 points by KiranRao0 44 days ago | 8 comments
Open and closed universes (2021) (sunshowers.io)
Type systems are tools for modeling some aspect of reality. Some types need to represent one of several different choices.
Type Systems, Programming Languages, Software Design
27 points by chautumn 46 days ago | 4 comments
Go Data Structures: Interfaces (2009) (swtch.com)
Go's interfaces—static, checked at compile time, dynamic when asked for—are, for me, the most exciting part of Go from a language design point of view. If I could export one feature of Go into other languages, it would be interfaces.
Programming, Go, Software Design
99 points by rednafi 59 days ago | 72 comments
Conway's Law (2022) (martinfowler.com)
Pretty much all the practitioners I favor in Software Architecture are deeply suspicious of any kind of general law in the field. Good software architecture is very context-specific, analyzing trade-offs that resolve differently across a wide range of environments. But if there is one thing they all agree on, it's the importance and power of Conway's Law. Important enough to affect every system I've come across, and powerful enough that you're doomed to defeat if you try to fight it.
Software Architecture, Conway's Law, Software Design
26 points by yamrzou 61 days ago | 1 comments
Go Is a Well-Designed Language (mattjhall.co.uk)
Go was designed at Google, where Russ Cox, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson and many others were working. Google was using Java and C++ at the time which the designers of Go felt were performant but hard to use. The compilers were slow, tooling was finicky and the languages had been designed at least a decade before. Cloud computing - large numbers of multicore servers working together - was becoming widespread.
Programming Languages, Google, Software Design
71 points by PaulHoule 64 days ago | 189 comments
Comptime as Configuration (openmymind.net)
If you look at my httpz library, you'll notice that httpz.Server(T) is a generic. The type passed to Server serves two purposes. The first is to support an application-specific context - whatever instance of T passed into Server(T).init gets passed back to your custom HTTP handlers.
Programming, Generics, Software Design, Configuration
59 points by todsacerdoti 85 days ago | 18 comments
Go Is a Well-Designed Language (mattjhall.co.uk)
Go was designed at Google, where Russ Cox, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson and many others were working. Google was using Java and C++ at the time which the designers of Go felt were performant but hard to use. The compilers were slow, tooling was finicky and the languages had been designed at least a decade before. Cloud computing - large numbers of multicore servers working together - was becoming widespread.
Programming Languages, Software Design, Google
20 points by sebg 87 days ago | 22 comments
Types are a basic tool of software design (2018) (tedinski.com)
One of my pet peeves is when someone makes like they’re going to talk about software design, and then… talks about comments. Or they focus on the details about how functions get written.
Software Design, Programming, Software Development
103 points by gus_leonel 95 days ago | 118 comments
Software Design Is Knowledge Building (olano.dev)
ORG relies on an integration service, SaaS, to decouple its business logic from vendor software dealing with billing, analytics, customer management, etc.
Software Design, Knowledge Management, Integration Services, SaaS
419 points by signa11 95 days ago | 110 comments
Building a Self-Hostable Product (fusionauth.io)
In this article, you’ll learn about the architecture, business model, and software design choices necessary to create a self-hostable developer tool.
Software Design, Self-Hosting, Developer Tools, Business Models, Architecture
24 points by mooreds 98 days ago | 7 comments
Arcan as Operating System Design (2021) (arcan-fe.com)
Arcan is a single-user, user-facing, networked overlay operating system.
Operating Systems, Software Design, User Interface
30 points by Bluestein 99 days ago | 3 comments
Lua is so underrated (bearblog.dev)
The more I learn about Lua's design and implementation, the more impressed I am. It's very rare to see software that does so much with so little code.
Programming Languages, Lua, Software Design
321 points by nflatrea 99 days ago | 354 comments
Visitor Pattern Considered Pointless – Use Pattern Switches Instead (nipafx.dev)
In modern Java, the visitor pattern is no longer needed. Using sealed types and switches with pattern matching achieves the same goals with less code and less complexity.
Java, Programming, Software Design, Design Patterns
3 points by signa11 106 days ago | 0 comments
Ideas from "A Philosophy of Software Design" (16elt.com)
Almost a month ago, I created a telegram channel with the goal of reading tech books consistently, and sharing summaries of them. This week, I have finished reading the first book - “A Philosophy of Software Design” by John Ousterhout and shared all of the 21 chapter summaries in the channel.
Software Design, Book Reviews, Technology
235 points by fagnerbrack 107 days ago | 135 comments
Developing Developers (2015) (felleisen.org)
Northeastern offers a unique But see P.S. Uniqueness. curriculum on programming. Instead of the currently fashionable programming language, it focuses on explicit and systematic approaches to program design. To bring this idea across to the full range of Northeastern freshmen, the first course uses a simple teaching language that is tailored to our goals.
Programming, Education, Curriculum, Software Design, Computer Science
201 points by danielam 109 days ago | 111 comments
Ask HN: Please recommend university open courses for software design? (ycombinator.com)
Hi everyone, currently I am trying to learn software design & engineering by these mit opencourse courses
Software Design, Education, Online Courses
60 points by ryuzaka 117 days ago | 19 comments
Consider Rexx for Scripting (2022) (opensource.com)
How do you design a programming language to be powerful yet still easy to use? Rexx offers one example. This article describes how Rexx reconciles these two seemingly contradictory goals.
Programming Languages, Scripting, Open Source, Software Design
45 points by walterbell 118 days ago | 33 comments
A C++ Mixin System (jennyjams.net)
I've had this idea in the back of my head for a while of pervasively using mixins to add code and logic for more high level concepts, although this gets somewhat close to Rust style traits (and C++ concepts). This has existed in the back of my head for a long time as a way to model a framework or standard library implementaiton while also providing it for user types.
C++, Object-Oriented Programming, Design Patterns, Software Design
74 points by luu 137 days ago | 40 comments