Top all-time · #8011
Brock Wilcox
Personal blog · thelackthereof.orgprogrammingsystems
Brock Wilcox writes The Lack Thereof, a personal blog at thelackthereof.org about programming and systems. Since 2011, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “Web Programming with Continuations (2002) [pdf]”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-16, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked as a reference on continuations and continuation-passing style, citing a continuations PDF and the author's Perl continuations web framework, Continuity. Also cited for genetic programming and Perl 6 colons.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Blog and content about programming, projects, the universe, etc, by Brock Wilcox (@awwaiid)
Most-linked posts?
- Web Programming with Continuations (2002) [pdf]4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-03-10
- Ways to use the colon in Perl 62 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-18
What Hacker News says?
References to some previous uses: https://thelackthereof.org/docs/library/cs/continuations.pdf Including pg’s ViaWeb written in continuation-passing style: https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/bbnexcerpts.txt
Comment linking /docs/library/cs/continuations.pdf
on “I’ve Consed Every Pair”Submitted Web Programming with Continuations (2002) [pdf] as a story · 56 points
HN discussion> I'm a little weak on the math side. In general, I think that tends to one of the advantages of genetic algorithm/programming over neural nets/deep learning - the math is comparatively quite easy. This is the paper that introduced CGP by Julian Miller: https://thelackthereof.org/docs/library/cs/gp/Miller,%20Juli... I found this good survey of CGP here (from 2018): https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s1071…
Comment linking /docs/library/cs/gp/Miller,%20Julian:%20Cartesian%20Genetic%20Programming.pdf
on “Finding Mona Lisa in the Game of Life”Submitted Ways to use the colon in Perl 6 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIf lower levels of the stack used them then more people would use them. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/papers/trickles-tocs.p... https://thelackthereof.org/docs/library/cs/continuations.pdf
Comment linking /docs/library/cs/continuations.pdf
on “Beautiful ideas in programming: generators and continuations”Submitted Perl 6 Is Separate from All, Replacement for None as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNot in URLs, but related: Larry's 1st Law of Language Redesign: Everyone wants the colon Larry's 2nd Law of Language Redesign: Larry gets the colon https://thelackthereof.org/Perl6_Colons
Comment linking /Perl6_Colons
on “URLs: It's Complicated”Submitted The Lack Thereof: Keyboard Number-Symbol Swap as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt should be noted that the owner/author of this website ( https://thelackthereof.org/ and not the posted PDF) wrote a Perl continuations based web library/framework called Continuity. - https://thelackthereof.org/Continuity - https://metacpan.org/pod/Continuity Shame it is no longer under development. Found it very handy & enjoyable using it for projects in the past (by itself and sometimes with Squatting framework…
Comment linking /Continuity
on “Web Programming with Continuations (2002) [pdf]”Relevant dead comment from leifus: > Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that pretty much exactly what ViaWeb did back then? Just use continuations to simulate a "classic" programming environment even if it's spread out over HTTP calls? Some googling provides some corroboration: https://thelackthereof.org/docs/library/cs/continuations.pdf Some more frameworks using this style: https://common-lisp.net/project/cl-weblo…
Comment linking /docs/library/cs/continuations.pdf
on “Method for client-server communications through a minimal interface”