Top all-time · #312
ezyang's blog
Personal blog · blog.ezyang.comprogramming
ezyang's blog is a personal blog at blog.ezyang.com about programming. Since 2010, 165 different Hacker News readers have linked it 310 times, most often “How to read Haskell like Python”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Edward Z. Yang's blog for Haskell and type-system explainers, space leaks, PyTorch internals and a guide to reading Haskell syntax.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Called a favourite, best of the bunch, helpful, one of the best Haskell syntax introductions, worth reading.
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?
- How to read Haskell like Python9 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2012-01-20
- PyTorch internals8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-05-17
- Debugging Compilers with Optimization Fuel7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2011-06-28
- A Catalog of Common Space Leaks in Haskell Programs 7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-05-16
- Announcing cabal new-build: Nix-style local builds5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-05-02
- You could have invented zippers5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-04-08
- The Haskell Heap5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2011-04-18
- Is Haskell liberal or conservative?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-08-10
- Hash Array Mapped Trie Performance in Clojure and Haskell5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-06-05
- You could have invented fractional cascading (2012)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-03-05
What Hacker News says?
Strongly and statically typed languages are way more discriminatory though. The whole idea is to reject a certain class of programs as being illogical, just because of the way they use expressions. Edit: e.g., http://blog.ezyang.com/2012/08/is-haskell-liberal-or-conserv...
Comment linking /2012/08/is-haskell-liberal-or-conservative/
on “Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO”Submitted PyTorch Internals: Ezyang's Blog as a story · 443 points
HN discussionThe only semi-regularly updated ones I currently have in my RSS reader are: - James Hague's "Programming in the 21st Century": http://prog21.dadgum.com/ - Edward Z. Yang's blog: http://blog.ezyang.com/ Rest of my daily blog hits I get via Hacker News and reddit/r/haskell
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you read daily?”Submitted PyTorch internals as a story · 179 points
HN discussionFor people who know the basics this article describes Pytorch in more detail: http://blog.ezyang.com/2019/05/pytorch-internals/
Comment linking /2019/05/pytorch-internals/
on “Deep Learning with PyTorch: A 60 Minute Blitz [video]”Submitted What Template Haskell gets wrong and Racket gets right as a story · 172 points
HN discussionI was intrigued by that statement as well and it sent me off on a little research excursion. Evidently a mathematician at MIT, David Spivak[0], has done some work on Databases as Categories. I found a presentation he gave to Galois[1] and a summary of the talk by E.Z. Yang.[2]. That said, I think "tables synonymous with CT itself" is a bit strong. Rather, the argument is that database schemas are categories if you m…
Comment linking /2010/06/databases-are-categories/
on “Osquery: Expose the operating system as a relational database”Submitted Extremist Programming as a story · 167 points
HN discussionI’ve found this blog post to be the best of the bunch http://blog.ezyang.com/2010/11/dp-zoo-tour/
Comment linking /2010/11/dp-zoo-tour/
on “Dynamic Programming for Technical Interviews”Submitted GET /browser.exe as a story · 139 points
HN discussionNot a complete answer to what you're looking for, but you might find this dive into PyTorch internals interesting: http://blog.ezyang.com/2019/05/pytorch-internals/
Comment linking /2019/05/pytorch-internals/
on “Practical Deep Learning for Coders”Submitted The fundamental problem of programming language package management as a story · 134 points
HN discussionHere are a bunch of blogs from my RSS reader that I think are worth reading. Some of them haven't updated in a while, but the archives may be worth a look anyway. * Blogs with a math focus: http://blog.sigfpe.com http://bit-player.org http://mathr.co.uk/blog/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/ * Blogs with a programming languages focus: https://existentialtype.wordpress.com https://bluishcoder.co.nz http://blog.ezyang.…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you follow?”Submitted How to read Haskell like Python as a story · 132 points
HN discussionList comprehensions actually don't tend to get used very frequently, so I would not point to that as a good example of what Haskell code looks like. It's hard to point to one example, as different parts of the code look very different. That is, pure functions look very different from monadic functions, which both look very different from datatype declarations and typeclass instances. I would recommend poking around…
Comment linking /2011/11/how-to-read-haskell/
on “What it's like to use Haskell”Submitted Bitcoin is not decentralized as a story · 119 points
HN discussionI'm not sure about the history. It looks like UHC supported existential types at some point, but I'm not sure how that would interact with what I am presuming is a more sophisticated system in GHC Haskell. This post had some interesting tidbits about technical challenges, but I didn't fully grasp everything on first read: http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/04/hindley-milner-with-top-level... I really like tome's observatio…
Comment linking /2016/04/hindley-milner-with-top-level-existentials/
on “Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]”Submitted Visualizing dynamic programming as a story · 116 points
HN discussion> How are type families worse than fundeps? That's a pretty ridiculous assertion; the things you can do with fundeps are strictly fewer than the things you can do with type families. It's not about how much you can do (otherwise, just use a dynamic language, you can do everything, even shoot yourself in the foot!), it's about whether the result makes sense, and how much effort it takes to make sense of it. > You're…
Comment linking /2014/09/open-type-families-are-not-modular/
on “The Rust Platform”Submitted The convergence of compilers, build systems and package managers as a story · 100 points
HN discussionWe also have "optimization fuel" in Rust, https://camlorn.net/posts/April%202017/rust-struct-field-reo... Which comes from http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/06/debugging-compilers-with-opti... , which cites a paper from 93.
Comment linking /2011/06/debugging-compilers-with-optimization-fuel/
on “New Racket Language Website”Submitted What is a stateless user interface? as a story · 94 points
HN discussionI like to recommend this article to people getting confused with Haskell's syntax: http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/11/how-to-read-haskell/ It concisely covers most of the syntax and some common idioms with prelude functions (such as using `$` and `.` to get rid of parenthesis)
Comment linking /2011/11/how-to-read-haskell/
on “Learn Haskell Fast and Hard”Submitted Extremist Programming (2012) as a story · 93 points
HN discussionI think this[1] blogpost has one of the best introductions to Haskell syntax that I have ever seen, and it doesn't get lost in other stuff. Perhaps you might find it useful. After some experience, I think the biggest pain point in Haskell's syntax is that it is very light on keywords so many things that would show up as syntax errors in other languages might show up as type errors in Haskell. For example, forgetting…
Comment linking /2011/11/how-to-read-haskell/
on “What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell 2.0”Submitted Graphs not Grids: How caches are corrupting algorithm designers (2010) as a story · 92 points
HN discussionWe need specialists too. We need the folks who can tune x86 assembly better than -gcc 03. We need people who can write segfault free C++ code, and we need people to fix the Rust borrow checker bugs http://blog.ezyang.com/2013/12/two-bugs-in-the-borrow-checke... There are plenty of available consumer of good tools, with more coming into the market every day. We need more specialists. Every person has the same capacit…
Comment linking /2013/12/two-bugs-in-the-borrow-checker-every-rust-developer-should-know-about/
on “I’m Joining LinkedIn”Submitted The Haskell Heap as a story · 83 points
HN discussionPerhaps the proper programming term might be co-ETL or co-data-lake? (Where we use 'co' in the same sense as eg http://blog.ezyang.com/2012/10/duality-for-haskellers/ )
Comment linking /2012/10/duality-for-haskellers/
on “Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity”Submitted Vmap in Haskell as a story · 82 points
HN discussion
