Top all-time · #1296
Ginger Bill
Personal blog · gingerbill.orgprogrammingsystems
Ginger Bill writes gingerBill, a personal blog at gingerbill.org about programming and systems. Since 2019, 57 different Hacker News readers have linked it 93 times, most often “A critique of package managers”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- A critique of package managers8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2025-09-08
- Was it really a Billion Dollar Mistake?6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2026-01-02
- Does Syntax Matter?4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2026-02-22
- Relative Pointers4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-05-24
- Memory Allocation Strategies4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-10-14
- Designing Odin's Casting Syntax3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-23
- The Fatal Flaw of Ownership Semantics3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-25
- Pragmatism in Programming Proverbs3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-01
- A Reply to “The Road to Zig 1.0”2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-06-14
- The Only Two Markup Languages2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-01-19
What Hacker News says?
Author of Odin is also against adding a package manager: https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2025/09/08/package-manage...
Comment linking /article/2025/09/08/package-managers-are-evil/
on “Shai-Hulud malware attack: Tinycolor and over 40 NPM packages compromised”Submitted The upcoming iterator design for Go 1.23 as a story · 134 points
HN discussionObligatory "package managers are evil:" https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2025/09/08/package-manage...
Comment linking /article/2025/09/08/package-managers-are-evil/
on “Compromised LiteLLM 1.107.0 on PyPI Installs a Credential Stealer and Backdoor”Submitted A critique of package managers as a story · 118 points
HN discussionTwo great resources are: - https://www.gingerbill.org/series/memory-allocation-strategi... - https://www.rfleury.com/p/untangling-lifetimes-the-arena-all...
Comment linking /series/memory-allocation-strategies/
on “A database without dynamic memory allocation”Submitted The Essence of Programming (2021) as a story · 96 points
HN discussionAmong flaws mentioned in the article was error handling in Odin, suggesting OP prefers Zig's way. It looks like Odin is actually experimenting with new approaches too [0]. [0]: https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2021/07/05/value-propagat...
Comment linking /article/2021/07/05/value-propagation-experiment/
on “Looking into Odin and Zig”Submitted A Reply to “Let’s stop copying C” as a story · 78 points
HN discussionI am the creator of the Odin programming language but Odin doesn't have a "killer feature". The lack of a "killer feature" does mean it is a very weird language to market for (see: https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2024/09/08/odin-weird-to-... ), but to summarize that article, Odin isn't trying to be hypeable, it's trying to be an extremely productive language for people looking for a C alternative for high perform…
Comment linking /article/2024/09/08/odin-weird-to-market/
on “Understanding the Odin Programming Language”Submitted Marketing the Odin programming language is weird as a story · 67 points
HN discussion>Any reading recommendations for introduction to the fundamentals of manual memory management specifically here is a series written by the creator of Odin programming language about memory allocation https://www.gingerbill.org/series/memory-allocation-strategi... The core:mem package in standard library is a very great resource for memory management in Odin. The standard library's basically got it all.
Comment linking /series/memory-allocation-strategies/
on “Understanding the Odin Programming Language”Submitted The Fatal Flaw of Ownership Semantics as a story · 50 points
HN discussionAny kind of relative/offset pointers require negative pointer arithmetic. https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2020/05/17/relative-point...
Comment linking /article/2020/05/17/relative-pointers/
on “Parameterized types in C using the new tag compatibility rule”Submitted Context: Odin’s Most Misunderstood Feature as a story · 46 points
HN discussionSo Odin the language in-itself is effectively done. But of course the core library, vendor library, tooling, etc are still very much being improved. The reason for the lack of "social media presence" is because Odin is kind of weird to market for: https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2024/09/08/odin-weird-to-... It's not "hypeable" like Zig or Rust mainly because it doesn't have any "killer features" but rather is a v…
Comment linking /article/2024/09/08/odin-weird-to-market/
on “Odin, a pragmatic C alternative with a Go flavour”Submitted If Odin Had Macros as a story · 40 points
HN discussionAfter more searching I found this article https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2020/05/17/relative-point... A far pointer sounds like the global based pointer described in that article. The far pointer Wikipedia article says they are problematic but doesn't give much reasoning as to why.
Comment linking /article/2020/05/17/relative-pointers/
on “Zig: Pointer Stability for ArrayLists”Submitted If Odin Had Macros as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThis critique applies to even closed-source development that uses open-source code bases. I have an article on my unstructured thoughts on the problems of OSS/FOSS which goes into more depth about this: https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2025/04/22/unstructured-t...
Comment linking /article/2025/04/22/unstructured-thoughts-on-oss/
on “A critique of package managers”Submitted The Video That Inspired Me to Create Odin as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI have read the post about exceptions: https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2018/09/05/exceptions-and... . I did not personally mind Odin's exceptions, to be honest. I prefer Odin's way, and Go's way, too. > you'll have to dig for them yourself. Yeah I was referring to such specifics, but I will take a look at Discord perhaps. > "Code indentation that is anything but 2, 3, 4, or 8 characters wide, is objectively a bad…
Comment linking /article/2018/09/05/exceptions-and-why-odin-will-never-have-them/
on “Lisp interpreter with GC in <750 lines of Odin (and <500 lines of C)”Submitted CTTI is Exponential, RTTI is Linear as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAuthor of the article here: I quote Rob Pike along with many others in the previous article I wrote (which is linked in the article): "Pragmatism in Programming Proverbs" https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2020/05/31/progamming-pra... And to be clear, I am making a distinction between the essence of "programming" and the essence of a "program". I agree that with Rob Pike that (and to quote myself) "The purpose of a…
Comment linking /article/2020/05/31/progamming-pragmatist-proverbs/
on “The Essence of Programming (2021)”Submitted Unstructured Thoughts on the Problems of OSS/FOSS as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHere are some references, I think Odin is more tasteful and sensible with a cleaner syntax. https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2019/05/13/a-reply-to-the... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFFcCLzOOyw&t=676s https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162056
Comment linking /article/2019/05/13/a-reply-to-the-road-to-zig/
on “Marketing the Odin programming language is weird”Submitted Context: Odin's Most Misunderstood Feature as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHe's written about it repeatedly. https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2025/09/08/package-manage... The short version is: projects should vendor their deps and manually resolve package versions. I don't think he states his argument very clearly. But I do think he's basically correct. Vendor your damn deps!
Comment linking /article/2025/09/08/package-managers-are-evil/
on “Is Odin just a more boring C?”Submitted Why People Are Angry over Go 1.23 Iterators as a story · 4 points
HN discussionRust finally got hit... This was motivating me to swap away from Rust towards because of the huge number of dependencies. It seemed inevitable. Ginger bill was right, https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2025/09/08/package-manage...
Comment linking /article/2025/09/08/package-managers-are-evil/
on “Malicious Rust Crate Arrayref Runs a Build-Time Payload”Submitted Good Tools Are Invisible as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
