Top all-time · #2802
Alex Clemmer
Personal blog · blog.nullspace.ioprogrammingsystems
Alex Clemmer's personal blog at blog.nullspace.io covers programming and systems. Since 2013, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 45 times, most often “How bad is the Windows command line really?”. The last post was in 2016, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for posts on building a search engine, Windows CMD.EXE and shell design, and Akamai's OpenSSL patch. Also cited for OCaml, Haskell parsing and file recovery.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- How bad is the Windows command line really?6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-03-30
- What "viable search engine competition" really looks like6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2014-01-05
- Turning the Apple //e into a lisp machine, part 14 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-08-12
- The obvious Python parser3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-07-29
- MSFT open sources production serialization system written partially in Haskell2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-10
- Recovering deleted files using only grep2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-06-25
- Half of IBM's profits come from mainframes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-29
- Beginner's guide to OCaml beginner's guides2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-07-10
- Twitter's IPO in simple terms2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-10-07
- How does Akamai's "secure heap" patch to OpenSSL work?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-04-13
What Hacker News says?
Worth reading: http://blog.nullspace.io/building-search-engines.html
Comment linking /building-search-engines.html
on “Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'”Submitted I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL as a story · 332 points
HN discussionA couple months ago, I decided to write a very short tutorial/introduction to the program `telnet`. I ended up deciding to use the <blink> tag to make a cursor that blinks similar to how it blinks in the terminal. Hilariously, I discovered that <blink> is actually no longer implemented in Chrome. The one legitimate use! I ended up mocking it with JavaScript. EDIT: it's here if you want to see how the cursor turned o…
Comment linking /day-208.html
on “Only 90s Web Developers Remember This”Submitted Beginner's guide to OCaml beginner's guides as a story · 209 points
HN discussionAs I understand it, CMD.EXE came from OS/2 and has had many revisions that allow more pervasive evaluation of variables (originally, they were expanded only once, at the beginning of a script). The .BAT/.CMD to build the Windows kernel must have originally been quite the kludge. Including pdksh in the original Windows NT might have been a better move. https://blog.nullspace.io/batch.html
Comment linking /batch.html
on “Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison”Submitted Turning the Apple //e into a lisp machine, part 1 as a story · 169 points
HN discussionOff topic, but I really enjoyed your post about writing a Python lexer/parser in Haskell. Thanks for that! http://blog.nullspace.io/obvious-python-parser.html
Comment linking /obvious-python-parser.html
on “I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL”Submitted 84% of a single-threaded 1KB write in Redis is spent in the kernel as a story · 158 points
HN discussionHere's a good blog article which looks at their patch: http://blog.nullspace.io/akamai-ssl-patch.html .
Comment linking /akamai-ssl-patch.html
on “Akamai release source to their custom secure_malloc for OpenSSL”Submitted Recovering deleted files using only grep as a story · 142 points
HN discussion- a0 · 2017-08-26
There’s a beginner’s guide to OCaml’s beginner’s guides: http://blog.nullspace.io/beginners-guide-to-ocaml-beginners-...
Comment linking /beginners-guide-to-ocaml-beginners-guides.html
on “New implementation of Git in OCaml” Submitted How bad is the Windows command line really? as a story · 135 points
HN discussionThe classic Windows shell has many flaws in its design, appears to have come from OS/2, and it's amazing that it works at all for how it has been used: https://blog.nullspace.io/batch.html Powershell is a new arrival, limited outside of Windows. I admit that I don't know it. The POSIX shell also has severe problems with ambiguity, and it is not an LR-parsed language: https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/co…
Comment linking /batch.html
on “Effective Shell”Submitted What "viable search engine competition" really looks like as a story · 120 points
HN discussionIf you follow the citation trail: 0. Dan writes an article about marginal employment decisions, which cites 1. Alex Clemmer wrote ( http://blog.nullspace.io/building-search-engines.html ) about building a search engine to compete with Google, who cites 2. John Peebles, who wrote ( https://peebs.org/2014/01/04/we-need-viable-search-engine-co... ) about the urgent need for a viable competitor to Google, saying: > I wo…
Comment linking /building-search-engines.html
on “I could do that in a weekend (2016)”Submitted Should I Machine-Learn? (2014) as a story · 30 points
HN discussionOne particular flaw was CMD.EXE. In the few pages where it is mentioned in the Showstoppers book, it appears that this code came from IBM. The scripting in CMD.EXE has been described as a "serial killer," and they really would have been better off implementing a Bourne shell for Windows. http://blog.nullspace.io/batch.html
Comment linking /batch.html
on “Dave Cutler’s five-decade-long quest for quality (2016)”Submitted The obvious Python parser as a story · 16 points
HN discussionThe Bond compiler is written in Haskell: http://blog.nullspace.io/bond-oss.html It is about time considering that Microsoft research has been one of the main funders of work on the Haskell compiler.
Comment linking /bond-oss.html
on “Bond – An extensible framework for working with schematized data”Submitted MSFT open sources production serialization system written partially in Haskell as a story · 10 points
HN discussionAs a last resort, if you remember part of the lost file, you can grep the hard drive: http://blog.nullspace.io/recovering-deleted-files-using-only... Saved some of my code once.
Comment linking /recovering-deleted-files-using-only-grep.html
on “$ rm Important.txt (uh oh)”Submitted How bad is the Windows command line really? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionIn 2012, The Economist reported that mainframes accounted for about a quarter of IBM's revenue and about half of its profits. [0] [1] IT budgets for large banks and financial firms usually dedicate something like 20% their budget to mainframes, but it usually accounts for about 80% of the firm's workload/processing. [0]: http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/09/ibms-mainf... [1]: http://blog.nullspace.io/ma…
Comment linking /mainframes.html
on “Mac at Work: IBM Launches Services to Deploy Macs at Scale to the Enterprise”Submitted FoundationDB proves the datastore is the worst place in your stack to take risks as a story · 7 points
HN discussionAt the same time, Xenix had a huge influence on Microsoft. I can't believe that anyone with taste would want CMD.EXE, and the criticism is deep. https://blog.nullspace.io/batch.html
Comment linking /batch.html
on “Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0”Submitted How bad is the Windows command line really? (2016) as a story · 6 points
HN discussion- a0 · 2014-07-27
(Author of the repo here). This is just a draft. I wasn't expecting this to be published here in its initial state. Actually my intention was just to create an exhaustive collection of references to useful resources for the OCaml programming language. The list is far from complete and needs more refinements both in terms of content, organization and design. So all of your critics are fair (and actually useful). I'll…
Comment linking /beginners-guide-to-ocaml-beginners-guides.html>
on “Looking to learn OCaml? Here's some places to start” Submitted Porting Mesos to Windows as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSpecific shells. "Bash is like the neighbor who seems nice and sweet, but maybe they don’t have a life you’d want to have personally. They have some pretty serious character flaws and obviously make mistakes, but in the end they are a nice person who tries hard to make sure the people that depend on them are doing ok. "Batch [cmd.exe] is the guy who looks like that neighbor, but then turns out to be a serial killer.…
Comment linking /batch.html
on “Shells Are Two Things”Submitted The obvious Python parser as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
