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Burning the Midnight Coffee
Personal blog · btmc.substack.comprogrammingsystems
Burning the Midnight Coffee is a personal blog at btmc.substack.com about programming and systems. Since 2023, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “Memory Unsafety Is an Attitude Problem”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-10, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked as a resource on memory unsafety and C/C++ memory allocation in a thread on C++ ownership. The comment cites the posts as reading material, without judging them.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The incoherent ramblings of a burnt out programmer. May sporadically contain useful information and tutorials.
Most-linked posts?
- Memory Unsafety Is an Attitude Problem2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-03-06
- Thoughts on Visual Programming2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-07
- Transaction-Oriented Programming2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-15
- The Power of Constraint Solvers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-10
What Hacker News says?
Sorry for the late reply, here you go: https://btmc.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-visual-programming
Comment linking /p/thoughts-on-visual-programming
on “Formatting code should be unnecessary”Submitted Implementing Logic Programming as a story · 217 points
HN discussionI saddens me that smart people like Herb and Bjarne have good ideas on how to make C++ a much safer language but the actual output of the standard's committee is so far behind. Herb mentions std::span as as safety improvement but the [] operator doesn't do bounds checks and the .at() method isn't even there yet! Shameless plug but I discuss this issue on my blog: https://btmc.substack.com/p/memory-unsafety-is-an-att…
Comment linking /p/memory-unsafety-is-an-attitude-problem
on “C++ Safety, in Context”Submitted Implementing Generic Types in C as a story · 89 points
HN discussionProper bounds checks vs C++'s "do everything wrong by default" is a big deal! Other than that, Object Pascal and C++ are about the same safety wise so I agree it should not be considered a "memory safe" language. Though personally I don't think "memory safe" vs "memory unsafe" is the right distinction since you can write 100% memory safe code in memory unsafe languages (and I don't mean making 0 bugs, I mean writing…
Comment linking /p/memory-unsafety-is-an-attitude-problem
on “Is Delphi a Memory Safe Language?”Submitted Tracing garbage collection for arenas as a story · 87 points
HN discussionI quite like this approach but I wish the web component spec had been better to begin with, I shouldn't have to "feed in" the internal divs to the web component (which wrecks encapsulation), HTML templates should be possible to name and instantiate from within HTML, allowing for proper encapsulation, while having the javascript be entirely optional and allow for progressive enhancement. I ramble about this on my blo…
Comment linking /p/making-sense-of-web-components
on “HTML Web Components: An Example”Submitted Faults, errors, and failures as a story · 83 points
HN discussionI'm interested in the same! There are plenty of resources for C[1][2]. I just looked into my old notes and found a post for C++[3]. [1] https://btmc.substack.com/p/memory-unsafety-is-an-attitude-p... [2] https://www.gingerbill.org/series/memory-allocation-strategi... [3] https://dmitrysoshnikov.com/compilers/writing-a-pool-allocat...
Comment linking /p/memory-unsafety-is-an-attitude-problem
on “Understanding C++ Ownership System”Submitted Don't use null objects for error handling as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI've wanted to make something like that for awhile but the web component standard is so lousy I haven't bothered (shameless plug: https://btmc.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-web-components ). More important than shadcn/ui is really the underlying Radix UI, the unstyled components. I'd love a copy-pastable pile of unstyled components one could just grab the individual, dependency-less .js file and plop it into a code…
Comment linking /p/making-sense-of-web-components
on “Ask HN: Is there something like shadcn/UI for vanilla HTML and JavaScript?”Submitted Implementing Scoped Defer in C as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Memory Unsafety is a Culture Issue as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on Visual Programming as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Memory Unsafety Is an Attitude Problem as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Awesome Power of Constraint Solvers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Power of Constraint Solvers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Borrow Checking from Scratch as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Language Feature to Rule Them All (Algebraic Effects) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Transaction-Oriented Programming as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Transaction-Oriented Programming as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted LL Handles Direct Left Recursion as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted I tried making a UI library as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tagged Pointers for Memory Safety as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Implementing Generators (Yield) in C as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to store types after Semantic Analysis as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Machine Reasoning: The forgotten side of AI as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making Sense of Web Components as a story · 1 points
HN discussion