Top all-time · #6476
James Munns
Personal blog · jamesmunns.com/bloghardwareprogramming
James Munns's personal blog at jamesmunns.com covers hardware and programming. Since 2016, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “Tiny Rocket – How to get tiny binaries while using rust for embedded systems”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for posts on embedded Rust: binary size, the cost of formatting on small devices, and a tiny PC project. Commenters cite them as sources without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Tiny Rocket – How to get tiny binaries while using rust for embedded systems3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-07-13
- Anachro-PC – The Anachronistic Personal Computer2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-31
- Formatting Is Unreasonably Expensive for Embedded Rust2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-12-09
- A little fixed point math for embedded audio2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-26
- The run-up to v1.0 for Postcard2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-10
What Hacker News says?
No way are you fitting a normal operating system on there. You can certainly compile rust to fit on there without any trouble though, you just have to try... the same way you have to try to compile any language in that sort of environment really. You can get to about 30kb while still keeping the standard library [1], you can get something with a fully featured web server in a few hundred kb [2]. [1] https://github.c…
Comment linking /blog/tinyrocket/
on “Microsoft: Rust Is the Industry’s ‘Best Chance’ at Safe Systems Programming”Submitted Building Tiny Rust Binaries for Embedded Linux as a story · 239 points
HN discussionThey're on the bigger side, due to a combination of defaulting to static linking, some optimizations not having been possible (ThinLTO comes to mind), lots of debug strings and metadata, as well as the use of jemalloc[1][2]. [1]: https://jamesmunns.com/blog/tinyrocket/ [2]: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-binary-sizes-once-again/1...
Comment linking /blog/tinyrocket/
on “Asmttpd: Web server for Linux written in amd64 assembly (2017)”Submitted Show HN: Rust, ARM Cortex M, and a Generated HAL as a story · 137 points
HN discussionThe author has his email (and twitter handle) in his about page ( https://jamesmunns.com/about/ )
Comment linking /about/
on “Formatting Is Unreasonably Expensive for Embedded Rust”Submitted Formatting Is Unreasonably Expensive for Embedded Rust as a story · 135 points
HN discussionReminds me of James Munns' "Anachro PC" https://jamesmunns.com/blog/anachro-pc-001/ https://github.com/jamesmunns/anachro
Comment linking /blog/anachro-pc-001/
on “The 100 Year Computer”Submitted A little fixed point math for embedded audio as a story · 69 points
HN discussionLast time I checked "Formatting is Unreasonably Expensive for Embedded Rust" (1) And/or you need a crate like alloc, heapless, etc. For the sake of a sprintf "abstraction"... (1) https://jamesmunns.com/blog/fmt-unreasonably-expensive/
Comment linking /blog/fmt-unreasonably-expensive/
on “Switching to C over 'Modern' Programming Languages”Submitted Anachro-PC – The Anachronistic Personal Computer as a story · 55 points
HN discussionSubmitted Chats with James Podcast 006: Bryan Cantrill as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted CI for Embedded Systems as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The run-up to v1.0 for Postcard as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Anachro-PC – The Anachronistic Personal Computer as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Postcard 1.0.0 Release as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A little fixed point math for embedded audio as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted MnemOS Initial Release Announcement as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tiny Rocket – How to get tiny binaries while using rust for embedded systems as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The run-up to v1.0 for Postcard as a story · 1 points
HN discussion