Top all-time · #1946
Farid Zakaria
Personal blog · fzakaria.com · on HN as setheronprogrammingsystems
Farid Zakaria's personal blog at fzakaria.com covers programming and systems. Since 2018, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 164 times, most often “Review a pull request by booting it”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
I’m a software engineer, father and wishful amateur surfer. If you’ve come seeking my political views, you’ve found the wrong Fareed.
Most-linked posts?
- Review a pull request by booting it4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-10
- An early look at Nix Dynamic Derivations4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-03-11
- Who Does Anubis Stop?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-07-09
- Actually Queryable Executables3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-08-25
- Bespoke Software Is the Future3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-01-02
- Nixpkgs for the frontend impaired3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-10-13
- Binaries: I thunk therefore I am3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-29
- Learn Nix the Fun Way3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-07-06
- A C++ toolchain from 357 bytes, in Bazel3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-08-03
- Three ways to smuggle SQLite into Nix3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-08-20
What Hacker News says?
You might like https://fzakaria.com/2026/08/24/actually-queryable-executabl...
Comment linking /2026/08/24/actually-queryable-executables
on “Executable Is a SQLite Database”Submitted Executable Is a SQLite Database as a story · 563 points
HN discussionreminds me of https://fzakaria.com/2026/08/23/your-executable-is-a-sqlite-...
Comment linking /2026/08/23/your-executable-is-a-sqlite-database
on “Show HN: Capsule – Single-file web apps that save their data into SQLite”Submitted Actually Queryable Executables as a story · 341 points
HN discussionI have written https://fzakaria.com/2020/05/31/containers-from-first-princi... a while ago in similar vein.
Comment linking /2020/05/31/containers-from-first-principles
on “Linux containers in 500 lines of code (2016)”Submitted Nix wrote half of my debugger as a story · 241 points
HN discussionWhat a fun read. Thanks for the nice call out on my blog. If you're also interested I (Farid) also had a follow up where I follow up on how the hashes are calculated. (Using the error to get the hashes also bugged me) I use it to also create vanity hashes :) https://fzakaria.com/2025/03/28/what-s-in-a-nix-store-path https://fzakaria.com/2025/03/27/nix-vanity-store-paths
Comment linking /2025/03/27/nix-vanity-store-paths
on “Nix Derivations, Without Guessing”Submitted Nix Derivation Madness as a story · 188 points
HN discussionFarid Zakaria recently gave a talk¹ (at NixCon 2022) where I think he put it better: Nix (and Guix) blur the line between dynamic and static linking. I think this is true, because with Nix and Guix, you actually have an end result with the positive characteristics of both kinds of linking. His talk, based on his work on shrinkwrap² and nix-harden-needed², called for the creation of a new executable format for the Ni…
Comment linking /2022/09/12/making-runpath-redundant-for-nix.html
on “Valve Is Paying Open-Source Developers to Work on Proton, Mesa, and More”Submitted Containers from first principles as a story · 102 points
HN discussionI'm still using the same one too! http://fzakaria.com/documents/resume/ It gets annoying to justify and align the paragraphs though.
Comment linking /documents/resume/
on “Ask HN: Resumes that look good but professional too”Submitted One Nix flake to rule them all as a story · 92 points
HN discussionSame I just wrote about my experience here on a project https://fzakaria.com/2025/01/28/bazel-build-event-protocol-v...
Comment linking /2025/01/28/bazel-build-event-protocol-viewer.html
on “Svelte 5 and the Future of Frameworks: A Chat with Rich Harris”Submitted Nixpkgs for the frontend impaired as a story · 90 points
HN discussionI actually wrote somethijg recently related to RPATH in Nix you might find interesting https://fzakaria.com/2022/03/14/shrinkwrap-taming-dynamic-sh...
Comment linking /2022/03/14/shrinkwrap-taming-dynamic-shared-objects.html
on “Rpath, or why lld doesn’t work on NixOS”Submitted Speeding up ELF relocations for store-based systems as a story · 64 points
HN discussionI forgot to mention, I wrote about it https://fzakaria.com/2024/11/08/jvm-boot-optimization-via-ja... I'm kind of intrigued by Mill but I've fallen into the same trap I've observed in others. I'm over indexed in mental capacity in having wasted learning Bazel and it's equivalent systems. The lift to another system has to be enough to surpass that loss.
Comment linking /2024/11/08/jvm-boot-optimization-via-javaindex.html
on “How fast does Java compile?”Submitted Reproducibility in Disguise as a story · 54 points
HN discussionI've been trying to write a about Bazel from first principles to help out. https://fzakaria.com/
Comment linking /
on “Mill: A better build tool for Java, Scala, and Kotlin”Submitted Any Nix package, live in the browser as a story · 48 points
HN discussionAs a nix person, I like this a lot and could see myself using it. My only criticism would be I don't love this kind of thing: "<!DOCTYPE html>\n" + html [ (attrs.lang metadata.lang) ] [ (head [ ] [ (partials.head context) ]) (body [ (attrs.classes [ "font-sans" "bg-white" ]) I understand that this is very flexible and powerful, but it immediately makes the templates highly non-portable and requiring of hand-authorsh…
Comment linking /2025/03/10/an-early-look-at-nix-dynamic-derivations
on “Nixtml: Static website and blog generator written in Nix”Submitted Every Byte Matters as a story · 38 points
HN discussionI agree and worry about that idea https://fzakaria.com/2025/07/07/home-manager-is-a-false-enli...
Comment linking /2025/07/07/home-manager-is-a-false-enlightenment
on “Json2dir: a JSON-to-directory converter, a fast alternative to home-manager”Submitted NixOS, Raspberry Pi and Me as a story · 35 points
HN discussionThe author's talks on nix go back to 2020: https://fzakaria.com/talks I suspect they know and care
Comment linking /talks
on “Any Nix package, live in the browser”Submitted Angle brackets in a Nix flake world as a story · 23 points
HN discussion"There's a video of the recovery here. It's only slightly over five minutes long, but then, UNIX V4 wasn't very big yet: for instance, the kernel was some 27 kB of code." "It's very small: it contains around 55,000 lines of code, of which about 25,000 lines are in C, with under 1,000 lines of comments." Yesterday, HN front page: https://fzakaria.com/2025/12/28/huge-binaries "Responses to my publication submissions o…
Comment linking /2025/12/28/huge-binaries
on “UNIX Fourth Edition”Submitted Linux Cgroup from First Principles as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSmall update: https://fzakaria.com/2026/10/07/nix-wrote-half-of-my-debugge...
Comment linking /2026/10/07/nix-wrote-half-of-my-debugger
on “Rewind VM: a flaky build you only catch once”Submitted Shrinkwrap: Taming Dynamic Shared Objects as a story · 20 points
HN discussion
