Top all-time · #2509
Daniel Hooper
Personal blog · danielchasehooper.com/posts · on HN as dhooperprogrammingdesignai
Daniel Hooper's personal blog at danielchasehooper.com covers programming, design and ai. Since 2019, 30 different Hacker News readers have linked it 36 times, most often “The Swift compiler is slow due to how types are inferred”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-01-07, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Daniel Hooper's blog mainly for its post on why Swift is slow, covering type-checker and compile-time problems. Other posts on C generics and segmented arrays are also cited.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Swift compiler is slow due to how types are inferred9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2024-06-12
- Good ideas in computer science6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-04-22
- An Experienced C Programmer Tries AI Agents3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-01-08
- A fast, growable array with stable pointers in C2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-06
- I write type-safe generic data structures in C2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-06-30
- I made a real-time C/C++/Rust build visualizer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-13
- Hot Reloading SwiftUI Apps2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-14
- Programming SDF animations of Rick and Morty2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-02-04
What Hacker News says?
There is an article about this based on a Chris Lattner talk/links to previous HN discussions: https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow/
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Swift 6”Submitted Making a 3D modeler in C in a week as a story · 680 points
HN discussionI only want one feature from Swift: faster type-checking. If you write a few lines of math, or a moderately complex SwiftUI expression, suddenly the typechecker starts timing out. Swift is the only language I've ever used with this problem. https://hachyderm.io/@evanw/109859384302551859 https://www.cocoawithlove.com/blog/2016/07/12/type-checker-i... https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow/ This isn't m…
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Swift 6”Submitted Programming SDF animations of Rick and Morty as a story · 505 points
HN discussionThey link to an old article [1] that was featured in HN [2] somewhat recently, in which there's a workaround for older standards with regards to typeof. [1]: https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/typechecked-generic-c-da... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44425461
Comment linking /posts/typechecked-generic-c-data-structures/
on “A fast, growable array with stable pointers in C”Submitted I made a real-time C/C++/Rust build visualizer as a story · 417 points
HN discussionI agree with you, but sounds like a rough problem: https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow/
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “A Vision for WebAssembly Support in Swift”Submitted I write type-safe generic data structures in C as a story · 412 points
HN discussionDoes anybody know if the upcoming version resolves the compilation time issues? https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow
on “Ladybird browser to start using Swift language this fall”Submitted The Swift compiler is slow due to how types are inferred as a story · 266 points
HN discussionWell I Googled myself since I was curious This comment says Rust's type inference is not Hindley-Milner, but rather it's "influenced by" bidirectional type checking: https://lobste.rs/s/hbzctm/type_inference_rust_c (but I think that is about type inference; I think there are parts of the Rust's type checking algorithm that could be described with different terms) --- This post quotes Chris Lattner on Swift, saying h…
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Typechecker Zoo”Submitted A fast, growable array with stable pointers in C as a story · 218 points
HN discussionAround midnight LA time, except the code may have a bug (?) with respect to DST changes (uses explicit UTC-8, which won't be correct the whole year). See source code at https://danielchasehooper.com/projects/cracked-sudoku/script...
Comment linking /projects/cracked-sudoku/script.js
on “A new Sudoku layout with 81 uniquely shaped cells”Submitted A new Sudoku layout with 81 uniquely shaped cells as a story · 188 points
HN discussionIt has nothing to do with code quality: https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow/
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Swift Container Plugin”Submitted Type Safe Generic Data Structures in C (2025) as a story · 155 points
HN discussionHere's a good blog post on the issue: https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow/
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Safe and efficient C++ interoperability via non-escapable types and lifetimes”Submitted Why Swift's type checker is so slow as a story · 74 points
HN discussionHere's a good blog post on the issue: https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow/
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Safe and efficient C++ interoperability via non-escapable types and lifetimes”Submitted Good ideas in computer science as a story · 31 points
HN discussionhttps://danielchasehooper.com/posts/why-swift-is-slow/
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Safe and efficient C++ interoperability via non-escapable types and lifetimes”Submitted Good Ideas in Computer Science as a story · 20 points
HN discussion> using arenas for arrays that grow wastes memory a lot since it keeps every previous version around Not if you use segmented arrays https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/segment_array/
Comment linking /posts/segment_array/
on “Claude Code uses Bun written in Rust now”Submitted Animating Rick and Morty One Pixel at a Time as a story · 15 points
HN discussion> Both Kotlin and Swift are compiled. I only said that because you said performant code "does not matter for a mobile app". I think writing apps in native frameworks is awesome! I'm all for it. BTW, I've heard some reports that SwiftUI/Swift are slow[1][2][3]. Again, I haven't explored SwiftUI and Kotlin, but I'd like some day. What do you love about them so much? > All that for being at best similar to the native t…
Comment linking /posts/why-swift-is-slow/
on “Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible”Submitted Good Ideas in Computer Science as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Snooping on Slow Builds (Using Syscalls) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted An Experienced C Programmer Tries AI Agents as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Good Ideas in Computer Science as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evaluating Opus 4.5 For C Programming as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
