Top all-time · #4852
Mulle kybernetiK
Personal blog · mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog · on HN as mulle_natprogrammingsystems
Mulle kybernetiK is a personal blog at mulle-kybernetik.com about programming and systems. Since 2010, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Mini_objc: A minimal Objective-C like runtime in less than 50 lines of code”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The Mulle kybernetiK weblog, written by an Objective-C runtime author, is linked for its articles on objc_msgSend dispatch cost, IMP caching benchmarks, and the mulle-objc runtime and compiler.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Mini_objc: A minimal Objective-C like runtime in less than 50 lines of code2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-29
- /weblog/2015/mulle_objc_a_new_objective_c_.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-11-26
- The C standard library function atexit is broken2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-06-19
What Hacker News says?
According to the link you posted, that's over four times slower than C++ virtual method dispatch (and note that most method calls in ordinary C++ code are not virtual). Also, IMP caching is hardly easy and is quite fiddly: see for example the benchmark code in that link as well as [1]. I highly recommend reading the tour of objc_msgSend [2]. It's very eye opening: for example, there's a cache scanning loop even in t…
Comment linking /artikel/Optimization/opti-3-imp-deluxe.html
on “Sony's next-gen application platform built on Objective C/GNUStep”Submitted My C code works with -O3 but not with -O0 as a story · 177 points
HN discussionNo, and if you do, then I suggest you visit a doctor. Rant: Objective-C is a wonderful language, once you learn it properly. There's a lot of Swift fanboiism (is that a word?) and a lot of Objective-C hate. I have an opinion on why. The vast majority of people that used Objective-C were drawn to the success of iOS. They were developers, used to languages like Javascript, Java or C++. Coming to Objective-C, their imm…
Comment linking /weblog/2015/mulle_objc_a_new_objective_c_.html
on “Bringing Objective-C to the Amiga”Submitted The C standard library function atexit is broken as a story · 99 points
HN discussion"It's compiled, not interpreted." The Objective-C calls are not really compiled. They are dynamically dispatched at runtime in a very equivalent manner to an interpreter or via reflection in Java. You can read about it here: http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/artikel/Optimization/opti-3.... Quite far from the compiled C calls also covered in the linked article.
Comment linking /artikel/Optimization/opti-3.html
on “The eero programming language - a dialect of Objective-C”Submitted Decoding old Nibs: A sad tale of vendor lock-in and abandonment as a story · 14 points
HN discussionThe biggest change so far seems to be a new memory management style called AAM, "Always Autorelease Mode". It's described on the compiler's Github page: https://github.com/Codeon-GmbH/mulle-clang "The transformed methods will return objects that are autoreleased. Hence the name of the mode. The net effect is, that you have a mode that is ARC-like, yet understandable and much simpler." This is like a halfway house be…
Comment linking /weblog/2015/mulle_objc_present_and_absent.html
on “Mulle-objc: A New Objective-C Compiler and Runtime”Submitted The beauty of generic header-names as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThere is some more information available here: https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2015/mulle_objc_a_ne...
Comment linking /weblog/2015/mulle_objc_a_new_objective_c_.html
on “Mulle-objc: A New Objective-C Compiler and Runtime”Submitted Show HN: Cross-platform Objective-C, now with IDE and dependency management as a story · 7 points
HN discussionDyld (dynamic linker) does this I think, it's effectively similar to other relocations. Each dynamic library brings its own set of selectors (I just think of them as strings in the data section of the binary, referenced indirectly via a pointer in the objc_selrefs section of the binary which can be updated as needed) and at runtime they're uniqueified. See https://www.sealiesoftware.com/blog/archive/2009/09/01/objc_…
Comment linking /weblog/2015/mulle_objc_selectors_are_hashes.html
on “Objective-C is just, like, a leaky abstraction over C”Submitted Intro – Modern Bash (Zsh) Scripting as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI remembered after writing this that there's an implementation[0] that boxes up method arguments, giving everything a signature of `void objc_msgSend(void self, SEL _cmd, void *_param)`. [0] https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2015/mulle_objc_meta...
Comment linking /weblog/2015/mulle_objc_meta_call_convention.html
on “Reading iOS app binary files”Submitted Modern Bash (Zsh) Scripting – New Tricks for an Old Shell as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCoincidentally, I wrote a post this week on how to make a "Amazon Music Player "app" for Linux using a custom Firefox profile: https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2023/amzn_music_play... . Wrapping more websites into their own profiles is sorta tempting :)
Comment linking /weblog/2023/amzn_music_player.html
on “Using extra Firefox profiles to make my life better”Submitted Dienstag iOS App Development Postmortem as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI guess mulle-vararg is possibly even more obscure, than my previous release mulle-aba, that I put up here a few days ago. If you are curious, why it even exists, here is a little bit of context: https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2016/started_the_mul...
Comment linking /weblog/2016/started_the_mulle_objc_releas.html
on “Show HN: Access variable arguments in struct layout fashion in C”Submitted Mini_objc: A minimal Objective-C like runtime in less than 50 lines of code as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mini_objc: A minimal Objective-C like runtime in less than 50 lines of code as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: Mulle-match-to-cmake generate cmake files from the filesystem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Various C Compilers disappointing optimization results as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mulle-bootstrap 2.0 release as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Optimizing Objective-C (2000-2004) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Updating to 10.9.2 for security reasons, but the biggest backdoor is still there as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted TWIG-like Templates in Objective-C as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Atexit() Is Broken as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted C Inheritance: putting functions into a struct as a story · 1 points
HN discussion