Top all-time · #926
Max Bernstein
Personal blog · bernsteinbear.com/blog · on HN as tekknolagiprogrammingsystems
Max Bernstein's personal blog at bernsteinbear.com covers programming and systems. Since 2012, 70 different Hacker News readers have linked it 255 times, most often “Programming Languages Resources”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Max Bernstein's blog for its compiler and Lisp implementation series, such as Compiling a Lisp and the OCaml Lisp interpreter series, plus scrapscript posts and a programming-language resources page.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called the Lisp series a nice series, exceptionally high-quality, and brilliant dev insights on scrapscript; a resources page a treasure trove; a go-to blog for
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Programming Languages Resources8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2021-10-01
- Compiling a Lisp (2020)7 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-08-31
- Type information for faster Python C extensions5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-01-14
- Ninja is enough build system5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-11-05
- Linear scan register allocation on SSA4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-08-13
- A multi-entry CFG design conundrum4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-23
- Abstract Interpretation in the Toy Optimizer4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-07-24
- Compiling a Lisp to x86_64 (2020)3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-12-20
- Value Numbering3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-04-05
- A quick look at zero-knowledge proofs3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-08-07
What Hacker News says?
Sort of! But also not really. If you want to get into this, I wrote a post about this: https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/typed-python/
Comment linking /blog/typed-python/
on “Python 3.13 Gets a JIT”Submitted You can use C-Reduce for any language as a story · 472 points
HN discussionNot OP, but I used `+citations` and `pandoc-citeproc` along with a bibtex file that I managed by hand for https://bernsteinbear.com/dat-paper/ (a small senior project paper). It worked pretty well for me.
Comment linking /dat-paper/
on “Pandoc”Submitted Writing that changed how I think about programming languages as a story · 463 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in programming languages and compilers, particularly if you're new to the space, my blog might be interesting to you: https://bernsteinbear.com/blog I've also got some other stuff there like a class I taught, some writing on distributed systems, etc
Comment linking /blog
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Bytecode compilers and interpreters as a story · 349 points
HN discussionhttps://bernsteinbear.com I write about programming languages and compilers, mostly.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted scrapscript.py as a story · 316 points
HN discussionI mostly work on interpreters and compilers. Mine is minimal because I refuse to make it otherwise: https://bernsteinbear.com
Comment linking /
on “Building a Kickass Portfolio”Submitted A simple search engine from scratch as a story · 296 points
HN discussionLocation, Palo Alto, CA / Medford, MA | Summer intermship Stack: Ruby, (Javascript, HTML, CSS), Python, PHP, C, Java, git Resume: http://bernsteinbear.com/resume/ Contact: max [at] bernsteinbear [dot] com I'm going to college next year, so I'm looking for an up and coming place to work this summer. It would be neat if I could continue part-time during the year (either remotely or from a Boston office or something) a…
Comment linking /resume/
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?”Submitted Microui+fenster=Small GUI as a story · 231 points
HN discussionI can share now if you like. They're at http://bernsteinbear.com/blog/lisp/ -- still a work in progress. I hope to be done with Primitives II tonight.
Comment linking /blog/lisp/
on “Show HN: Crafting Interpreters – A handbook for making programming languages”Submitted Adding row polymorphism to Damas-Hindley-Milner as a story · 211 points
HN discussionThis is kind of like the page I made for bread on my website: https://bernsteinbear.com/bread/ Love it
Comment linking /bread/
on “Based Cooking”Submitted Compilers for free with weval as a story · 204 points
HN discussionEDIT: Paste this hacky snippet into your browser's console to save all of the links into your clipboard: (() => { let result = [...document.querySelectorAll('td a')] .map((link) => link && !link.href.includes('ycombinator') && !link.href.includes('javascript:void') ? link.href : '' ) .filter(Boolean); result = [...new Set(result)]; result.sort(); copy(result.join('\n\n')); })(); Just to help, here's a compiled-list…
Comment linking /pl-resources/
on “Ask HN: Great Blogs by Programmers”Submitted Compiling a Lisp: Lambda lifting as a story · 162 points
HN discussionIf you like programming languages content, I link to a lot of excellent papers and blogs from https://bernsteinbear.com/pl-resources/
Comment linking /pl-resources/
on “Ask HN: Great Blogs by Programmers”Submitted Damas-Hindley-Milner inference two ways as a story · 139 points
HN discussionIf you're interested in PL and blogging, mine night be of use to you. https://bernsteinbear.com
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are some great personal blogs/portfolios?”Submitted Into CPS, Never to Return as a story · 137 points
HN discussionThe author has a nice series on compiling a Lisp [0], but unfortunately his search engine fails to find it by querying it with "lisp" or "Lisp". [0] https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/compiling-a-lisp-0/
Comment linking /blog/compiling-a-lisp-0/
on “A simple search engine from scratch”Submitted Nix Derivations, Without Guessing as a story · 136 points
HN discussionThe comments are wildly fragmented in this thread. I agree with @torginus, the article has less and less of anything useful to people that want to get into compilers. Anyways, the "Who .. hires compiler engineer?" section is fairly vague in my opinion, so: AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Google definitely hire for compiler positions. These hire fairly 'in-open' so probably the best bets all around. Aside from this, Jane…
Comment linking /pl-resources/
on “Becoming a compiler engineer”Submitted Neat Parallel Output in Python as a story · 131 points
HN discussionIf you're interested, I wrote a small paper about the Dat Project for my distributed systems class: https://bernsteinbear.com/dat-paper/
Comment linking /dat-paper/
on “Introducing the Dweb”Submitted Compiling a Lisp to x86-64: Let expressions as a story · 131 points
HN discussionMAL is pretty good, albeit less hand-holding: https://github.com/kanaka/mal Writing a Lisp in Ocaml: https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/lisp/00_fundamentals/ Not Lisp-specific but Crafting Interpreters is also great: https://craftinginterpreters.com/
Comment linking /blog/lisp/00_fundamentals/
on “Build Your Own Lisp”Submitted Compiling a Lisp to x86_64 (2020) as a story · 128 points
HN discussion
