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Michael R. Bernstein

Personal blog · michaelrbernste.inprogrammingculture

Michael R. Bernstein's personal blog at michaelrbernste.in covers programming and culture. Since 2013, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 84 times, most often “Real-Time Garbage Collection Is Real”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.

Visit the blog
84mentions?
1recommend?
34HN people?
2013–2025first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 24 in 2013

Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?

Why HN links it

HN readers link Michael R. Bernstein's series of posts on garbage collection, real-time GC, declarative programming and the CTM textbook, along with his talk writeups. Commenters use them as references.

Recommended for · 1 comments
One commenter called his RICON 2013 talk on distributed systems archaeology one of the best talks they had attended.

Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.

Most-linked posts?

  1. Real-Time Garbage Collection Is Real
    6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2013-06-04
  2. Learning How To Learn Programming
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-02-25
  3. Distributed Systems Archaeology [video]
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-12-02
  4. Should I read papers?
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-10-23
  5. The Only Sure Thing In Computer Science
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-11-13
  6. To Know A Garbage Collector: Video
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-07-01
  7. Matter, Anti-Matter, and the Unified Theory of Garbage Collection
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-12
  8. Matter, Anti-Matter, and the Unified Theory of Garbage Collection
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-07
  9. What Is Declarative Programming (2013)
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-24

What Hacker News says?

  1. I believe his point was they implemented hard-real-time, embedded Java with GC on some components that was fielded successfully. That refutes any objection to whether it can be done. At that point, we're talking whether the new project can pull that off on what kind of hardware with what constraints. EDIT to clear up two sub-conversations here: what Aonix pulled off for hard-real-time Java; that there's also hard-re…

    Comment linking /2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-collection-is-real.html

    on “GERT: Run Go on Bare Metal ARMv7”
  2. Submitted Types Are The Truth as a story · 132 points

    HN discussion
  3. Don't rule real-time out. Real-time GC's exist. People just need to build open ones for these languages. Example write-up on this: http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-colle...

    Comment linking /2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-collection-is-real.html

    on “Specification for the D Programming Language”
  4. Submitted Real-Time Garbage Collection Is Real as a story · 119 points

    HN discussion
  5. This is a beautiful result that I've written up and spoken about a few times - http://michaelrbernste.in/2014/02/24/papers-we-love-garbage.... - it's surprisingly deep and foments a deep intuition that may developers have.

    Comment linking /2014/02/24/papers-we-love-garbage.html

    on “A Unified Theory of Garbage Collection [pdf]”
  6. Submitted The Only Sure Thing In Computer Science as a story · 97 points

    HN discussion
  7. See also Michael Bernstein's articles and talks on the subject, including the paper linked: http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/10/to-know-a-garbage-colle...

    Comment linking /2013/06/10/to-know-a-garbage-collector-goruco-2013.html

    on “A Unified Theory of Garbage Collection [pdf]”
  8. Submitted Formalizing Concurrency, Distribution, and Mobility as a story · 71 points

    HN discussion
  9. If you are in for the hype, it might be tiresome. Once you mastered the tech, it goes out of fashion. If you try to be in for a new perspective, it might be useful, since 'Everything is a tradeoff' (tm ;)[1]. Currently I evaluate tradeoffs between speed, readability and maintainability. In case of Go, I'm also interested in how someone like ken designs a language today. [1] http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/11/13/the-o…

    Comment linking /2013/11/13/the-only-sure-thing-in-computer-science.html

    on “Why I switched from Ruby to Go”
  10. Submitted Real-Time Garbage Collection Is Real as a story · 54 points

    HN discussion
  11. As I said in another thread recently, garbage collectors don't have to be of the stop-the-world, non-deterministic kind. It's perfectly possible to have real-time garbage collection [1], and the language I commonly work with supports soft real-time use with the default GC [2]. I'm no expert on garbage collection techniques, but what I have picked up is that most of the challenge lies in timing of the collections (wh…

    Comment linking /2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-collection-is-real.html

    on “uLisp – Lisp for the Arduino”
  12. Submitted What Is Declarative Programming (2013) as a story · 53 points

    HN discussion
  13. Yes, I have heard of some algorithms that consume a lot more memory to balance timing. E.g.: http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-colle...

    Comment linking /2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-collection-is-real.html

    on “Mac Apps That Use Garbage Collection Must Move to ARC”
  14. Submitted What Lazy Evaluation Really Means as a story · 46 points

    HN discussion
  15. Ok found the answer http://michaelrbernste.in/2014/10/21/should-i-read-papers.ht...

    Comment linking /2014/10/21/should-i-read-papers.html

    on “A farewell note to a programming language”
  16. Submitted Lisp is Abstract Syntax as a story · 35 points

    HN discussion
  17. macintux · 2021-01-20Recommends
    Some of the best talks I've been fortunate enough to catch have been archaeological expeditions. MRB's was the first I attended, at RICON 2013: https://michaelrbernste.in/2013/11/19/distributed-systems-ar... I wasn't lucky enough to catch it live, but Bret Victor's classic "The Future of Programming" is worth watching if you haven't already: http://worrydream.com/dbx/ And I might as well plug my own talk about the C…

    Comment linking /2013/11/19/distributed-systems-archaeology-part-one.html

    on “Syllabus for Classics of Computer Science”
  18. Submitted Matter, Anti-Matter, and the Unified Theory of Garbage Collection as a story · 34 points

    HN discussion
  19. Part of a series on GC: http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/03/real-time-garbage-colle... http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/10/to-know-a-garbage-colle... http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/05/20/adventures-in-GC-pedago...

    Comment linking /2013/05/20/adventures-in-GC-pedagogy.html

    on “Matter, Anti-Matter, and the Unified Theory of Garbage Collection”
  20. Submitted Declarative Computation, Syntactic Sugar, and the Abstract Machine as a story · 31 points

    HN discussion
  21. Also part of a series. Chapter 01: http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/02/19/CTM-chapter-01.html On the paper that sums up the pedagogy: http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/02/23/notes-on-teaching-with-...

    Comment linking /2013/02/23/notes-on-teaching-with-the-kernel-language-approach.html

    on “Declarative Computation, Syntactic Sugar, and the Abstract Machine”
  22. Submitted Matter, Anti-Matter, and the Unified Theory of Garbage Collection (2013) as a story · 21 points

    HN discussion
  23. Warning: I am neither a skilled nor experienced programmer. I would say the kernel of programming languages is more practically something like C, assembly, or machine language. Kernel implies containing the core functionality, the building blocks. Van Roy's kernel language does seem to contain core ideas for ideal programming languages, even though it doesn't seem to translate well to existing hardware / machine lan…

    Comment linking /2013/02/23/notes-on-teaching-with-the-kernel-language-approach.html

    on “Ask HN: CTM gave CS the “kernel language”. Is there a “kernel database”?”
  24. Submitted Distributed Systems Archaeology [video] as a story · 15 points

    HN discussion
  25. Part of a series! http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/17/declarative-computation... http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/02/23/notes-on-teaching-with-... http://michaelrbernste.in/2013/02/19/CTM-chapter-01.html

    Comment linking /2013/02/19/CTM-chapter-01.html

    on “What Is Declarative Programming?”
  26. Submitted Distributed systems archaeology: part three as a story · 12 points

    HN discussion
  27. Already discussed in 2017[1] and 2014[2]. Blog post overview at [3]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14823054 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8028777 [3] https://michaelrbernste.in/2013/06/12/matter-anti-matter.htm...

    Comment linking /2013/06/12/matter-anti-matter.html

    on “A Unified Theory of Garbage Collection [pdf]”
  28. Submitted What is a Type System for? as a story · 11 points

    HN discussion
  29. Submitted Sales For Engineers, 1-50 as a story · 10 points

    HN discussion
  30. Submitted You are learning Haskell right now as a story · 9 points

    HN discussion

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