Top all-time · #2693
Lindsey Kuper
Personal blog · decomposition.alprogrammingsystems
Lindsey Kuper writes decomposition ∘ al, a personal blog at decomposition.al about programming and systems. Since 2022, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “A CAP tradeoff in the wild”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Lindsey Kuper’s blog
Most-linked posts?
- A CAP tradeoff in the wild3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-01
- Carol's Causal Conundrum: a zine intro to causally ordered message delivery2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-04-10
- Where "Simulation" Came From2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-20
- Who Invented Vector Clocks?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-04-09
- Communicating Chorrectly with a Choreography zine [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-06
- /blog/2017/07/30/what-do-people-mean-when-they-say-transpiler/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-22
- Fighting Faults in Distributed Systems [pdf]2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-06-27
- "Communicating Chorrectly with a Choreography" is out2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-05
What Hacker News says?
The link to Lindsey Kuper's post https://decomposition.al/blog/2017/07/30/what-do-people-mean... is great! I think the note about generators may be a good definition for when one language is "more powerful" than another; at least it's a good heuristic: > The input and output languages have the syntax of JavaScript but the fact that compiling one feature [generators] requires a whole program transformation gives away…
Comment linking /blog/2017/07/30/what-do-people-mean-when-they-say-transpiler/
on “Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)”Submitted A CAP tradeoff in the wild as a story · 35 points
HN discussionFrom the very end of the linked article: > Lindsey Kuper has a well-written article[1] on the same topic > [1]: https://decomposition.al/blog/2017/07/30/what-do-people-mean... So maybe go read that one instead, because the linked article is sloppily written with lots of careless mistakes and an unclear motivation that probably the author was hazily aware of at the time of writing but failed to communicate. Also he's…
Comment linking /blog/2017/07/30/what-do-people-mean-when-they-say-transpiler/
on “Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)”Submitted When is causal broadcast not enough for causal memory? as a story · 19 points
HN discussionFor anyone looking for an easily digestible primer on choreographies: https://decomposition.al/zines/communicating-chorrectly-zine... Too bad the github readme doesn't explain how the choreographic side of Wyzer works, or even what it looks like (please correct me if I'm wrong, couldn't find it after a quick skim).
Comment linking /zines/communicating-chorrectly-zine.pdf
on “Show HN: Wyzer Programming Language”Submitted Adventures in Building Reliable Distributed Systems with Liquid Haskell as a story · 11 points
HN discussionOh and it's not the only one, there's also “Fighting Faults in Distributed Systems” [1] and several others from other students..! [2] [1] https://decomposition.al/CSE138-2024-01/zines/zine-ali.pdf [2] https://decomposition.al/blog/2019/06/29/my-students-made-zi...
Comment linking /blog/2019/06/29/my-students-made-zines-and-so-can-yours/
on “Communicating Chorrectly with a Choreography zine [pdf]”Submitted Who Invented Vector Clocks? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI link to the pdf directly in hopes that it gets more attention, a post from 7 hours ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42330776 ) didn't get any. I recommend people to check it out, it's delightful ! Very nice way to present a concept, and they must have put in a lot of work to it The blog post introducing it is at https://decomposition.al/blog/2024/12/05/communicating-chorr...
Comment linking /blog/2024/12/05/communicating-chorrectly-with-a-choreography-is-out/
on “Communicating Chorrectly with a Choreography zine [pdf]”Submitted When is causal broadcast not enough for causal memory? as a story · 7 points
HN discussionGood point about teamware, though I think sun was a very unusual company, and particularly network focussed. Also, the internet itself had a decentralized design (for military robustness, IIRC). Maybe making the core data structure be a merkle tree (not a separate data structure for validation) was new... at least, for version control? It seems monotone used merkle trees as an overlay https://decomposition.al/blog/2…
Comment linking /blog/2019/05/31/how-i-learned-about-merklix-trees-without-having-to-become-a-cryptocurrency-enthusiast/
on “The State of Merging Technology”Submitted A CAP Tradeoff in the Wild as a story · 5 points
HN discussionWow, it surprises me that there aren't more comments on this zine, which I find a delightful way to present interesting CS topics, detailed explanation and pages full of explanatory drawings that speak. The Zines page [0] mentions the definition of a zine: > "a small-circulation print or online publication that is produced through noncommercial means and is meant to appeal to a niche audience" So then, is "causally…
Comment linking /zines/
on “Carol's Causal Conundrum: a zine intro to causally ordered message delivery”Submitted "Communicating Chorrectly with a Choreography" is out as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://decomposition.al/CSE232-2024-09/readings/note-distri...
Comment linking /CSE232-2024-09/readings/note-distributed-computing.pdf
on “What if Python was natively distributable?”Submitted I took the "Crusty Interpreter" class! as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A CAP Tradeoff in the Wild as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Call for lightning talks: Haskell Symposium 2026 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Who Invented Vector Clocks? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Where "Simulation" Came From as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted My adventures with Git-filter-branch (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Communicating Chorrectly with a Choreography zine [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fighting Faults in Distributed Systems [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted An example run of a matrix-based causal unicast protocol as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Carol's Causal Conundrum: a zine intro to causally ordered message delivery as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Where "Simulation" Came From as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fighting Faults in Distributed Systems [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
