Top all-time · #13
danluu.com
Personal blog · danluu.com · on HN as luuprogrammingsystems
danluu.com is a personal blog at danluu.com about programming and systems. Since 2013, 1,199 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,915 times, most often “Computer latency: 1977-2017”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Dan Luu's posts for well-researched technical analysis: input latency, branch prediction, and startup and salary tradeoffs. Several commenters point to specific articles as useful references.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called 'worth reading', 'a nice curated list', and 'good' on web bloat and on team diversity.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Computer latency: 1977-2017124 people · 162 mentions · first linked 2017-12-24
- Terminal and shell performance63 people · 69 mentions · first linked 2017-07-18
- /50 people · 55 mentions · first linked 2016-11-03
- I could do that in a weekend (2016)47 people · 56 mentions · first linked 2017-03-13
- Big Companies vs. Startups (2015)41 people · 53 mentions · first linked 2016-09-11
- Static vs. Dynamic Languages39 people · 49 mentions · first linked 2017-02-26
- Files Are Hard37 people · 41 mentions · first linked 2016-04-24
- Keyboard latency36 people · 46 mentions · first linked 2017-10-16
- The web sucks if you have a slow connection27 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2017-02-08
- 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach26 people · 29 mentions · first linked 2020-02-07
What Hacker News says?
Dan Liu has some choice comments on Wirecutter reviews: https://danluu.com/why-benchmark/ Whenever I visit them I get the opposite of Gell-Mann amnesia syndrome and remember how terrible their recommendations are on products I am familiar with.
Comment linking /why-benchmark/
on “Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories”Submitted Willingness to look stupid as a story · 1859 points
HN discussionI'm thinking you might be right. It's going to be really hard to give up real world gains from branch prediction. Branch prediction can make a lot of real world (read "not the finest code in the world") run at reasonable speeds. Another common pattern to give up would be eliding (branch predicting away) nil reference checks. > short of entirely preventing speculating code from being able to load things into the cach…
Comment linking /intel-cat/
on “Reading privileged memory with a side-channel”Submitted We only hire the trendiest as a story · 1615 points
HN discussionIf you use something like tmux you will notice higher latencies. Clearly, if you've been using terminals since DOS in 90s and the issue does not bother you, then you are likely happy with whatever it is you are using. If you want to look into the issue and read on methodology used before I recommend Dan Luu's from 2017 [1] [1] https://danluu.com/term-latency/
Comment linking /term-latency/
on “Ghostty 1.0”Submitted The web sucks if you have a slow connection as a story · 1269 points
HN discussionWhat effect will this have on the mono-repo debate? http://danluu.com/monorepo/
Comment linking /monorepo/
on “G is for Google”Submitted Programming books you might want to consider reading as a story · 1019 points
HN discussion>who is using pip so much that .36s of startup time matters to them? https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity https://danluu.com/input-lag/
Comment linking /input-lag/
on “Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade”Submitted Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT as a story · 950 points
HN discussionHow does that align with Dan Luu’s article “95th percentile isn’t that good”[1] and the general observation so many of us have that the companies we work for and interact with and buy from are executing so badly on so many fronts? That is, most programmers aren’t good programmers, most managers aren’t good managers, most salaries aren’t good salaries, most salespeople aren’t good salespersons, most workflows aren’t…
Comment linking /p95-skill/
on “How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)”Submitted How web bloat impacts users with slow devices as a story · 932 points
HN discussionObligatory link: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/
Comment linking /sounds-easy/
on “Meta lays off 11,000 people”Submitted We should be more ambitious with the software we build as a story · 915 points
HN discussionIt's also funny that he didn't even put it in the post. I'm not sure it's because of length restrictions, since the post is 4,495 words long. Maybe he wanted to keep under 4,500. Also perplexing: footnote 2 mentions the car tire paradox. (Traction is determined by weight and coefficient of traction, and those two things only. So why do high performance cars have wider tires, which shouldn't make a difference? Becaus…
Comment linking /octopress-speedup/
on “Willingness to look stupid”Submitted We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016) as a story · 910 points
HN discussionI'm not a fan of this article because it seems like Dan doesn't understand that people are much more willing to work with people who aren't purposefully being obtuse. But Dan is on here because he generally writes well researched articles like [0] [1] and his minimal website aesthetics appeal to the HN crowd. [0]: https://danluu.com/input-lag/ [1]: https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/
Comment linking /keyboard-latency/
on “Willingness to look stupid”Submitted How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? as a story · 879 points
HN discussionCan I ask a stupid question? Who is Dan Luu and why does he keep appearing here? The content hasn’t been amazing. It’s not amazing here either. The blog doesn’t have an about me page as far as I can tell. Google says Dan is a systems engineer at Nvidia. Edit: Found the About page https://danluu.com/about It's at the bottom of articles, but not accessible on the home page. If this were an actual technical topic, I'd…
Comment linking /about
on “Willingness to look stupid”Submitted Why is it hard to buy things that work well? as a story · 848 points
HN discussionThe paradoxical thing with recent Apple laptop keyboards is that their Magic Keyboard 2 is pretty darn good. I haven't bought any Apple products for more than a decade, but I keep recommending and buying their Magic Keyboard 2 for Linux workstations. It has a very good mechanical feel, and it reduces latency perhaps due to shallow action point and/or firmware tweaks [1]. Also, it's really easy to source ANSI layouts…
Comment linking /keyboard-latency/
on “16-inch MacBook Pro”Submitted Individuals Matter as a story · 774 points
HN discussionThis is a good post about how bad the modern web is getting for people with slow/unreliable connections: https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ That was written two and a half years ago now, and things have only continued to get worse since then.
Comment linking /web-bloat/
on “Tell HN: Thank you for not redesigning Hacker News”Submitted Keyboard latency as a story · 747 points
HN discussionThis is absolutely true. I remember Dan Luu [1] and patio11's [2] blog posts from 9 years ago and 13 years ago respectively, which were widely shared, arguing essentially that you should always prefer to join a FAANG. With FAANGs all downsizing to varying degrees, or at the very least not in growth mode, this advice seems less clear-cut. For better or worse, I think we're starting to see the pendulum swing a bit tow…
Comment linking /startup-tradeoffs/
on “Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity”Submitted HN comments are underrated as a story · 733 points
HN discussionHmm, much better than I remember. I guess this goes a long way to explain why this wasn't always seen in practice: http://danluu.com/assembly-intrinsics/
Comment linking /assembly-intrinsics/
on “Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test”Submitted Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation as a story · 730 points
HN discussionAs computers got more complex, latency increased. It's really pretty remarkable to see how things have changed over the years[1]. I do agree that 58ms seems far outside of the range of "next display refresh", however. [1] https://danluu.com/input-lag/
Comment linking /input-lag/
on “Zed, a collaborative code editor, is now open source”Submitted Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend as a story · 712 points
HN discussion
