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Cargo Cult Code
Personal blog · cargocultcode.comprogrammingdata
Cargo Cult Code is a personal blog at cargocultcode.com about programming and data. Since 2019, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times, most often “Solving the regex of madness, and snarky answers on StackOverflow (2019)”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its regex post solving the Zalgo regex question, which answers Stack Overflow answers that call the question unanswerable, and for posts on database normalization history, including 4NF.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Thoughts, stories and ideas.
Most-linked posts?
- Solving the regex of madness, and snarky answers on StackOverflow (2019)5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-09-02
- Normalization Is Not a Process2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-23
What Hacker News says?
Stack Overflow have some infamous example of "snarky" answers getting highly upvoted - despite being outright wrong. I wrote a bit about such a case here: https://www.cargocultcode.com/solving-the-zalgo-regex/ In short, the question here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open... is complete legitimately and answerable, but nevertheless have dozens of answers ridiculing the question for trying…
Comment linking /solving-the-zalgo-regex/
on “Tired of Stack Overflow”Submitted Solving the regex of madness, and snarky answers on StackOverflow (2019) as a story · 117 points
HN discussionThe problem with the answer is it is wrong. The question is about identifying start-tags in XHTML. This is a question of tokenization and can be solved with a regular expression. Indeed, most parsers use regular expressions for the tokenization stage. It is exactly the right tool for the job! Furthermore, the asker specifically needs to distinguish between start tags and self-closing start tags. This is a token-leve…
Comment linking /solving-the-zalgo-regex/
on “Is there a regular expression to detect a valid regular expression?”Submitted What does First Normal Form mean? as a story · 76 points
HN discussionHere is the answer to the question: https://www.cargocultcode.com/solving-the-zalgo-regex/ tl;dr: It can indeed be solved relatively easily with a regex.
Comment linking /solving-the-zalgo-regex/
on “Is there a regular expression to detect a valid regular expression?”Submitted Normalization Is Not a Process as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA rebuttal here: https://www.cargocultcode.com/solving-the-zalgo-regex/
Comment linking /solving-the-zalgo-regex/
on “ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ causes "Invalid MD5 checksum on messages"”Submitted A few thought about snarky answers on StackOverflow (2019) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis is a very good graphical demonstration (especially the merged cells), thank you. It is also a variation "2b" from Kent's list (just for reference). I think that the textual demonstration of the same effect could be found in https://www.cargocultcode.com/normalization-is-not-a-process... ("So where did it begin?" section). I rediscovered this blog post after I published the article.
Comment linking /normalization-is-not-a-process/
on “Historically, 4NF explanations are needlessly confusing”Submitted Single Responsibility Principle Explained as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> Might it be a consequence of lack of disk space in those early decades A plausible explanation of "normalization as a process" was actually found in https://www.cargocultcode.com/normalization-is-not-a-process... ("So where did it begin?"). I hope someday to find some technical report of migrating to the relational database, from around that time.
Comment linking /normalization-is-not-a-process/
on “5NF and Database Design”An amusing answer, but see https://www.cargocultcode.com/solving-the-zalgo-regex/
Comment linking /solving-the-zalgo-regex/
on “That people produce HTML with string templates is telling us something”
