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HXA7241 latest
Personal blog · hxa.name/notes · on HN as hxa7241programming
HXA7241 latest is a personal blog at hxa.name about programming. Since 2008, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 47 times, most often “Wittgenstein for programmers”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link hxa.name notes on porting Wittgenstein's Tractatus logic to software engineering, the MiniLight global illumination renderer written as a language-learning exercise, and the 'part blindness' idea.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Wittgenstein for programmers4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2011-02-19
- Tiny Global Illumination renderer in C++, AS3, Ruby, Python, Lua, Scala and OCAML3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-03-23
- /minilight/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-05-08
- Genetics Basics for Programmers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-07-21
- Software as web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-15
What Hacker News says?
https://www.hxa.name/ ‒ lightweight, handmade, maybe a little bit of unusualness of design, quite a few writings, some software, other oddities, and almost 20 years old.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted In Lisp, should lists be replaced with trees? as a story · 47 points
HN discussionThe idea of selling copies of information is very basically broken. Half the time stuff is made but undersells copies because the producer did not find out no-one wanted it, and the other half, people are prevented from realising value that could actually be freely available. Such a structure consumes a scarce resource -- creative effort -- wastefully, and restricts an abundant resource -- communicability of informa…
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20120103T1008Z.html
on “Right versus pragmatic”Submitted Wittgenstein for programmers as a story · 41 points
HN discussion> we will all be able to read programs when they can be written in English and not in code. Anyone thinking along those lines needs to read Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EW... (and maybe tack this on too: http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20101218T2158Z.html ).
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20101218T2158Z.html
on “"My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."”Submitted The aim of software engineering - HXA7241 as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> code diet . . . (limit of 10K lines) Yes, sort-of, although . . . A simple example 'in the small' to consider: function/procedure size. Should we (syntactically) limit functions to, say, <30 lines? What we are really trying to do here is limit complexity. And that is not simply a result of length, but more of interrelation. If we recall Dijkstra's intent with 'Structured Programming', it was to make complexity pro…
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20101124T1927Z.html
on “John Carmack on the importance of Static Code Analysis”Submitted Tiny Global Illumination renderer in C++, AS3, Ruby, Python, Lua, Scala and OCAML as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> From a deontological perspective, perhaps That actually seems even less defensible than the normal pragmatic, consequentialist position. See Koepsell and Wilson, as summarised in this article: http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/copyright-ethics-agains... Also, one can see a simple question that no moral argument for copyright/IP seems able to answer: why impose a restriction on a beneficial abundance? (where the…
Comment linking /articles/content/copyright-ethics-against_hxa7241_2010.html
on “Swiss Government: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal ”Submitted A fault in blogs - HXA7241 as a story · 7 points
HN discussionAnd if you like that (spheres only), you might also like this (general triangles-based), in 444 lines of Scala (and OCaml, Python, Ruby, Lua, Scheme, C++, and C): http://www.hxa.name/minilight/
Comment linking /minilight/
on “Recursive raytracer in 35 lines of JavaScript”Submitted Genetics Basics for Programmers as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThis is significantly similar to part of a note I wrote a month or two ago, about 'Software as web' http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20110314T2011Z.html Functions calling (linking) each other, and being built out of available pieces, ideally at a global scale -- this is just like the structure of the web. * Functions should have URLs * Functions should be augmented with metadata, like their language/platform *…
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20110314T2011Z.html
on “Erlang inventor: Why do we need modules and files?”Submitted Wittgenstein for programmers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAs Eckermann recorded Goethe saying, on Friday 1831-03-25: Goethe showed me an elegant green elbow-chair, which he had lately bought at an auction. "However," said he, "I shall use it but little, or not at all; for all kinds of commodiousness are against my nature. You see in my chamber no sofa; I always sit in my old wooden chair, and never till a few weeks ago have I had a leaning-place put for my head. If surroun…
Comment linking /books/ecog/Eckermann-ConversationsOfGoethe-1831.html
on “Please, make yourself uncomfortable”Submitted Programming language power versus genome: can they be compared? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'd argue that every programmer interested in language design needs to read Wittgenstein. His later work in ethics and epistemology (that the article recommends, Philosophical Investigations) is hit or miss, but his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , which deals with the nature of language as it relates to our ability to think and formulate ideas, is undeniable. He essentially builds a framework for breaking reality d…
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html
on “Eminent Philosophers Name the Most Important Philosophy Books from 1950-2000”Submitted Genetics Basics for Programmers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI have a comparison too: a rather different kind, but no less reasonable for this sort of game, and with all source available -- http://www.hxa.name/minilight/#comparison It says that languages do not vary by factors of 10. Considered as pure 'lexical structure' the range is about 2 or 3 between small and large. Anything more than that must have some reason -- most probably library support. Of course, library suppor…
Comment linking /minilight/
on “Clojure vs Scala - Anecdote”Submitted Reusability by Orthogonalysis as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> evolution cares not at all for separation of concerns That is not really quite true. Look at human anatomy: it is structured into various discrete organs. That is separation of concerns. Evolution indeed appears to create, adjust, and maintain systems of abstraction, somehow . . . and when you think about it, it seems central to what evolution is doing. You can start with the thought that there must be some cohere…
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20090831T2006.html
on “Vitamin C is a bug that needs to be patched”Submitted Is parsing not an illusory problem caused by using the wrong data structure? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA basic roundup of ethical problems for IP: * Conflict with fundamental personal liberty: Mill's idea that we have unrestricted liberty except to the extent that it injures someone else, is fairly standard. But IP conflicts with that, yet IP is not fundamental, not grounded in physical fact. (See Koepsell: http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip... ) * Cannot be justified on the basis of harm: O…
Comment linking /articles/content/ethical-case-against-ip_koepsell_2009.html
on “The 'intellectual property' oxymoron”Submitted What part of design *is* possible? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionInterestingly enough, there is an effort to "port" the Tractatus' logic to software engineering: http://www.hxa.name/notes/note-hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20110219T1113Z.html
on “A Philosopher Every Programmer Should Know: Susanne K. Langer”Submitted Distinguishing abstraction and change - HXA7241 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhat is abstraction? Here is an informal casual answer that works quite well. An abstraction unites something fixed with something varying . It specifies something fixed that ecompasses a set of variants. For example, an 8 bit number fits this straightforwardly. The number of bits and their interpretation as successive powers of 2 is what is fixed; the actual values of the bits is what varies. It seems quite a good…
Comment linking /notes/note-hxa7241-20110410T0910Z.html
on “The Philosophy of Computer Science ”Submitted The second basic question of software engineering as a story · 2 points
HN discussion. . . or MiniLight: http://www.hxa.name/minilight/ is an alternative: it is larger -- averaging 650 lines -- but it is available in 9 different languages -- and is a more complete renderer that you can put your own scenes into. (I am working on the Scheme translation at the moment)
Comment linking /minilight/
on “Lisp interpreter in 90 lines of C++”Submitted Software as web as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
