Top all-time · #1809
Kobzol’s blog
Personal blog · kobzol.github.ioprogrammingsystems
Kobzol’s blog is a personal blog at kobzol.github.io about programming and systems. Since 2020, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 76 times, most often “Making Rust binaries smaller by default”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Jakub's Rust posts on binary size, compile times and compiler performance. HN commenters cite them as sources for Rust build and binary questions, and one suggests the blog has more interesting posts.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- One commenter says to check out the binary-size post; another calls Jakub's other posts 'really interesting'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Blog about programming stuff.
Most-linked posts?
- Making Rust binaries smaller by default6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-01-24
- Write Python like it's Rust (correct link)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-05-20
- Async Rust is about concurrency, not (just) performance4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-01-15
- Building Rust binaries in CI that work with older GLIBC3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-14
- Rust compiler performance3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-06-09
- Investigating and fixing a nasty clone bug3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-31
- Process Spawning Performance in Rust3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-28
- Adding [Derive(From)] to Rust2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-03
- 1160 PRs to improve Rust in 20252 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-05
- Optimizing Rust programs with PGO and BOLT using cargo-pgo2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-28
What Hacker News says?
https://github.com/johnthagen/min-sized-rust explains some of it and https://kobzol.github.io/rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-b...
Comment linking /rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-binaries-smaller-by-default.html
on “IDEs we had 30 years ago and lost (2023)”Submitted Rust compiler performance as a story · 287 points
HN discussionI actually upgraded my team's Jest config to use https://github.com/Brooooooklyn/swc-node a few weeks ago. However, our Jenkins CI agents run RHEL7, and neither of the Linux binary targets would run. The `x64-gnu` binary needed a `GLIBC_2_23` symbol when only 2.18 was available, and the `x64-musl` binary had no `musl-libc` on the machine. I don't own the Jenkins agents, so I couldn't install other deps myself. I end…
Comment linking /rust/ci/2021/05/07/building-rust-binaries-in-ci-that-work-with-older-glibc.html
on “Next.js 12”Submitted Making Rust binaries smaller by default as a story · 248 points
HN discussionThe previous post on the OP's blog is about exactly this: https://kobzol.github.io/rust/rustc/2025/06/02/reduce-cargo-...
Comment linking /rust/rustc/2025/06/02/reduce-cargo-target-dir-size-with-z-no-embed-metadata.html
on “Rust compiler performance”Submitted Tokio and Prctl = Nasty Bug as a story · 200 points
HN discussionThe stdlib already mostly does all of that :) Check out https://kobzol.github.io/rust/2024/01/28/process-spawning-pe... .
Comment linking /rust/2024/01/28/process-spawning-performance-in-rust.html
on “Tokio and Prctl = Nasty Bug”Submitted Evolution of Rust Compiler Errors as a story · 166 points
HN discussionRust binaries seem to be larger than they should be, though. I believe Kobzol [1] has been making some work on that. [1]: https://kobzol.github.io/rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-b...
Comment linking /rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-binaries-smaller-by-default.html
on “WebAssembly Playground”Submitted What part of Rust compilation is the bottleneck? as a story · 125 points
HN discussionMy experience has been different: last year I started writing Python again after a long break, and I am yet to regret using types pervasively. If some library has no type definitions, I prefer to have my typed code interact with its untyped code. It is still better than having no types at all. You can sometimes get some useful type safety by annotating your functions with the untyped library's classes. Since then, I…
Comment linking /rust/python/2023/05/20/writing-python-like-its-rust.html
on “Shape typing in Python”Submitted Just write a test for it as a story · 72 points
HN discussionCheck out Making Rust binaries smaller by default ( https://kobzol.github.io/rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-b... ). Previously discussed a few weeks ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39112486 . That change will be live on 21st March, so manual strips won't be required after that.
Comment linking /rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-binaries-smaller-by-default.html
on “The Linux Kernel Prepares for Rust 1.77 Upgrade”Submitted Compiling Rust is testing as a story · 62 points
HN discussionFWIW Jakub has more blog posts on his website which are also really interesting https://kobzol.github.io/
Comment linking /
on “What part of Rust compilation is the bottleneck?”Submitted Speeding up the Rust compiler without changing its code as a story · 56 points
HN discussionI believe the extra size before stripping is because Rust ships the standard library with debug symbols included by default (for now) Source: https://kobzol.github.io/rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-b... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39112486
Comment linking /rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-binaries-smaller-by-default.html
on “A small Rust binary indeed (2022)”Submitted Reducing Cargo target directory size with -Zno-embed-metadata as a story · 53 points
HN discussionI appreciate this detailed explanation! To preface, I took on macro expansion caching because it was a clear solution for the slow builds I saw in some projects (taking the "project-specific" approach I mentioned in the blog). That said, my medium-term vision for CodeRemote isn't to develop a superior closed-source Rust compiler fork; instead, it is to provide remote tooling for faster development (i.e. bring small…
Comment linking /rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-binaries-smaller-by-default.html
on “I reduced (incremental) Rust compile times by up to 40%”Submitted Process Spawning Performance in Rust as a story · 40 points
HN discussionSee https://kobzol.github.io/rust/rustc/2024/03/15/rustc-what-ta... , which does an extensive analysis on that.
Comment linking /rust/rustc/2024/03/15/rustc-what-takes-so-long.html
on “Zig's Incremental Compilation Internals”Submitted Rust compiler performance as a story · 13 points
HN discussion> but I had heard that the compiler is slow (because it's doing so much thinking and checking in advance). The compiler is indeed not particularly speedy, but the reason you were given is not entirely accurate. As measured in this blog post [0] different parts of the compilation pipeline will take different amounts of time depending on what you're doing (cargo check vs. incremental build vs. full build, building a l…
Comment linking /assets/posts/compile-sections/libraries.png
on “Is Python Becoming Pinyin?”Submitted Speeding up the Rust compiler without changing its code (2022) as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThose are graphs of averages from across the benchmarking suite, which you can read much more information about here: https://kobzol.github.io/rust/rustc/2023/08/18/rustc-benchma...
Comment linking /rust/rustc/2023/08/18/rustc-benchmark-suite.html
on “Is Rust faster than C?”Submitted Why doesn't Rust care more about compiler performance? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere was another one of these posts floating around recently https://kobzol.github.io/rust/python/2023/05/20/writing-pyth... My personal experience is that while this would be a really good way of getting people to write quality Python code, a lot of python users (data scientists) are not software engineers and don't have the discipline to do this without very strict PRs
Comment linking /rust/python/2023/05/20/writing-python-like-its-rust.html
on “Writing Python Like Rust”Submitted Async Rust is about concurrency, not (just) performance as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI personally doubt you'll get anything out of this route, but maybe I'm not seeing a line of reasoning that led to this. On a more helpful note, I'd check out a few books (try https://hackernewsbooks.com ) and then pick a subject/domain you find interesting and create a small project to use as a learning medium. Also, to tinker with assembly you could start with simple but interactive processor and assembly simulato…
Comment linking /davis/
on “Ask HN: How to learn Assembly Language and C to better understand Python?”Submitted Two ways of interpreting visibility in Rust as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
