Top all-time · #3614
Benchling Engineering
Company blog · benchling.engineeringprogramming
Benchling Engineering is the company blog at benchling.engineering, writing about programming. Since 2015, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Enforcing Transitive Constraints in SQL”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-19, 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 Benchling's engineering posts on CRISPR search and AWS Lambda, DNA sequence regex search, CRISPR optimization, React rendering and relational schema design.
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?
- Enforcing Transitive Constraints in SQL3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-11-30
- Analyzing performance analysis performance (or, why is EXPLAIN ANALYZE slow)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-05-22
- Optimizing CRISPR: Sub-second searches on a 3 billion base genome2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-23
- Move fast and migrate things: how Benchling automated migrations in Postgres2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-02-08
- /crispr-aws-lambda/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-24
- Jade to React: using prod validation to make modernization safe, fast, and fun2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-09-12
- Sqlalchemy_batch_inserts: For When It's Slow to Insert Thousands of Rows2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-03-04
- Performance Engineering with React, Part 12 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-02-04
What Hacker News says?
maybe WRT to https://www.google.com/search?q=genome+sequencing+algorithms which would be needed to find unique patterns among billions of base pairs for CRISPR to target. it's microscopic big data :D [1] http://benchling.engineering/dna-regex-search/?hn [2] http://benchling.engineering/optimizing-crispr/
Comment linking /optimizing-crispr/
on “Crispr Wins Key Approval to Fight Cancer in Human Trials”Submitted Move Fast and Migrate Things: How We Automated Migrations in Postgres as a story · 193 points
HN discussionI don't know the answer to how Neon would affect that, but AFAIK, you can already do this: http://julienblanchard.com/2015/rust-on-aws-lambda/ But that uses a shell command. There's also this way to do so using FFI (article is about C++, but I'm pretty sure you could do the same with Rust): http://benchling.engineering/crispr-aws-lambda/
Comment linking /crispr-aws-lambda/
on “Neon: Node plus Rust”Submitted Performance Engineering with React, Part 1 as a story · 158 points
HN discussionI would be thrilled if they provided an update, but Benchling's CRISPR search is what originally got me excited about Lambda. It's an incredibly compelling use case, as it enabled one second searches at any level of demand. And, their hosting costs dropped from thousands of dollars on EC2 to $60 on Lambda. http://benchling.engineering/crispr-aws-lambda/
Comment linking /crispr-aws-lambda/
on “Introducing Apex – Serverless Architecture with AWS Lambda”Submitted Powering CRISPR with AWS Lambda as a story · 110 points
HN discussionIt is, so a DOM change wouldn't occur, but in these cases you still go through a React rendering to virtual DOM phase (templating) and the DOM tree reconciliation. Since these can be slow (although much faster than a DOM change), it makes sense to check and skip those steps when you can. The focus of most of this article is how you can skip those steps when you're components input data is unchanged and common gotcha…
Comment linking /performance-engineering-with-react/
on “Optimizing React Rendering”Submitted Building a Regex Search Engine for DNA as a story · 109 points
HN discussionprogramming in time is hard (especially with migrations, because migrations take time) this feels too high-level -- different migration operations can afford different guarantees (esp in the multi-node case). In particular this doesn't talk about data migrations, where you might need to lock 2 tables + join them to generate a third. not all migrations are pure-sql either, they may include app code my favorite articl…
Comment linking /move-fast-and-migrate-things-how-we-automated-migrations-in-postgres-d60aba0fc3d4
on “The operational relational schema paradigm”Submitted From 200K lines of CoffeeScript to zero: making decaffeinate super-stable as a story · 95 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Deep Dive into React Perf Debugging as a story · 83 points
HN discussionSubmitted Modeling Science as a Directed Graph as a story · 79 points
HN discussionSubmitted Parallel C++ on AWS Lambda for CRISPR as a story · 72 points
HN discussionSubmitted Optimizing CRISPR: Sub-second searches on a 3 billion base genome as a story · 70 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evolving to Enterprise-Grade Permissions as a story · 26 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building computed fields in a biological database as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Enforcing Transitive Constraints in SQL as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Enforcing Transitive Constraints in SQL as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a DNA Regex Search Engine as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Analyzing performance analysis performance (or, why is EXPLAIN ANALYZE slow) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Good Designers Borrow: Creating a Visual System for Modified RNA as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted DNA Regex Search with Elasticsearch as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Benchling's double-writes approach to incrementally adopting GraphQL as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sqlalchemy_batch_inserts: For When It's Slow to Insert Thousands of Rows as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Benchling's summer interns and their adventures in DNA, inventory, and Lambda as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why is Postgres EXPLAIN ANALYZE slow in Docker for Mac? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building computed fields in a biological database as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Look at the Evolution of Benchling’s Search Architecture as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reliable Cypress Browser Testing at Benchling as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted FAQs about Engineering at Benchling (YC S12) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
