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Nick Fitzgerald

Personal blog · fitzgeraldnick.comprogrammingsystems

Nick Fitzgerald's personal blog at fitzgeraldnick.com covers programming and systems. Since 2009, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “Always Bump Downwards”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-01, and you can follow it by feed.

Visit the blog
70mentions?
43HN people?
2009–2024first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 8 in 2015

Most-linked posts?

  1. Always Bump Downwards
    6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-11-02
  2. /2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry.html
    4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-02-28
  3. Async Stack Traces in Rust
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-08-28
  4. Source Maps Are an Insufficient Debugging Format for the Web
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-01-05
  5. Garbage Collection Without Unsafe Code
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-07
  6. Speed Without Wizardry
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-02-26
  7. Hiding Implementation Details with ECMAScript 6 WeakMaps
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-13
  8. Synthesizing Loop-Free Programs with Rust and Z3
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-01-13
  9. Destructuring Assignment in ECMAScript 6
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-08-15
  10. Message Passing, Duck Typing, Object Composition, and not Inheritance
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-01-01

What Hacker News says?

  1. steveklabnik · 2015-05-15
    So, in general, Rust should be good for writing VMs. If you want a JIT, though, Rust may not have any super huge advantage with it, specifically, as it would basically be all unsafe anyway. There was a really great blog post about writing a Scheme implementation, including a GC: http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/60/

    Comment linking /weblog/60/

    on “Announcing Rust 1.0”
  2. andrew3726 · 2017-02-22

    Submitted Demangling C++ Symbols in Rust as a story · 245 points

    HN discussion
  3. mnemonik · 2014-04-29
    > The whole resources view https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=926449 Here's a screencap of the WIP (ignore the text): https://bug970517.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=841... > JavaScript profiling (heap, cpu, events) We have CPU profiling now, but we are in the process of reworking the UI to make it more useful and include a better presentation for events and how they fit into that picture. I'm wor…

    Comment linking /weblog/54/

    on “Firefox 29”
  4. crunchiebones · 2018-12-15

    Submitted Rust and WebAssembly in 2019 as a story · 237 points

    HN discussion
  5. masklinn · 2022-11-03
    There was a back and forth on that subject a few years back: Mozilla rewrote their sourcemap parser from JS to naïve Rust (/WASM) for a 5.89x gain, mraleph objected to the need and went through an epic bout of algorithmic and micro-optimisations to get the pure JS to a similar level, then the algorithmic optimisations were reimported into the Rust version for 3x further gain (and much lower variance than the pure JS…

    Comment linking /2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry.html

    on “PR that converts the TypeScript repo from namespaces to modules”
  6. mnemonik · 2018-02-26

    Submitted Speed Without Wizardry as a story · 206 points

    HN discussion
  7. mnemonik · 2014-06-10
    I'm working on these tools now, finishing up initial platform work, should start on business logic/UI fairly soon here and get a version 0 out soon. See http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/54/ for some implementation details.

    Comment linking /weblog/54/

    on “Firebug 2.0”
  8. mnemonik · 2013-08-15

    Submitted Destructuring Assignment in ECMAScript 6 as a story · 123 points

    HN discussion
  9. mnemonik · 2015-11-12
    Yes it is. I also wrote more about the backend implementation on lobste.rs < https://lobste.rs/s/cvtz0x/firefox_s_new_memory_tool >: Hi folks, For the last year or so, my coworker Jim Blandy and I have been designing and implementing APIs in SpiderMonkey (Firefox’s JavaScript engine) to support various kinds of memory allocation/retention introspection. We are finally shipping a frontend to users as well, and this b…

    Comment linking /weblog/61/

    on “Firefox’s New Memory Tool”
  10. mnemonik · 2018-04-26

    Submitted How does dynamic dispatch work in WebAssembly? as a story · 98 points

    HN discussion
  11. jashkenas · 2013-03-04
    Right. As far as I know, they currently work in Chrome, in Node.js (with a library), in Webkit nightlies, and are getting close-ish in Firefox nightlies: http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/45/

    Comment linking /weblog/45/

    on “CoffeeScript 1.6.0 released with support for source maps”
  12. mnemonik · 2015-06-19

    Submitted Source Maps Are an Insufficient Debugging Format for the Web as a story · 71 points

    HN discussion
  13. mbrubeck · 2018-04-02
    And if you are willing to depend on Rust code, there's also a C++ symbol demangler written in Rust... :) http://fitzgeraldnick.com/2017/02/22/cpp-demangle.html

    Comment linking /2017/02/22/cpp-demangle.html

    on “Building Tiny Rust Binaries for Embedded Linux”
  14. mnemonik · 2015-11-02

    Submitted Back to the Futu-Rr-e: Deterministic Debugging with Rr as a story · 61 points

    HN discussion
  15. markdog12 · 2019-02-14
    Don't forget to follow that up with the second follow-up: http://fitzgeraldnick.com/2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry....

    Comment linking /2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry.html

    on “Replacing JavaScript Hot Path with WebAssembly”
  16. mnemonik · 2014-03-12

    Submitted Beyond Source Maps as a story · 53 points

    HN discussion
  17. touisteur · 2021-07-19
    What's probably missing is a standard test suite for the protocol... Can't one generate one with model-based testing or another rather automatic mean. Who's the boss of the lsp project? :-) I'm adding something from my open tabs: https://fitzgeraldnick.com/2020/08/24/writing-a-test-case-ge...

    Comment linking /2020/08/24/writing-a-test-case-generator.html

    on “Diffsitter: A tree-sitter based AST difftool to get meaningful semantic diffs”
  18. mnemonik · 2011-01-01

    Submitted Message Passing, Duck Typing, Object Composition, and not Inheritance as a story · 35 points

    HN discussion
  19. e1g · 2014-08-31
    Thank you! TLDR: JSX transformer makes the following ES6 features compatible with old browsers (IE8+) * arrow functions [ http://tc39wiki.calculist.org/es6/arrow-functions/ ] * classes [ https://github.com/esnext/es6-class ] * destructuring [ http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/50/ ] * object concise methods [ http://ariya.ofilabs.com/2013/03/es6-and-method-definitions.... ] * rest parameters [ http://tc39wiki.calculis…

    Comment linking /weblog/50/

    on “A React.js case study”
  20. azhenley · 2020-08-24

    Submitted Writing a Test Case Generator for a Programming Language as a story · 31 points

    HN discussion
  21. acemarke · 2017-11-15
    Pretty much, yeah. Today's web applications go through multiple forms of compilation and transformation. Conversion from ES6 modules to CommonJS, compilation of newer JS syntax into equivalent older syntax supported by more browsers, minification that renames symbols to cut down on the total byte size delivered, and bundling of hundreds of individual modules into a single output JS bundle (or possibly several code-s…

    Comment linking /2015/06/19/source-maps-are-insufficient.html

    on “What is a Source Map”
  22. steveklabnik · 2015-02-23

    Submitted Memory Management in Oxischeme as a story · 21 points

    HN discussion
  23. steveklabnik · 2021-02-28
    Performance. See the graphs here: https://fitzgeraldnick.com/2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry... Look how much spread there is in the JS, and how little there is in the wasm. Depending on what you're doing, this may or may not matter to you.

    Comment linking /2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry.html

    on “WebAssembly”
  24. ingve · 2020-01-13

    Submitted Synthesizing Loop-Free Programs with Rust and Z3 as a story · 20 points

    HN discussion
  25. steveklabnik · 2021-06-24
    https://fitzgeraldnick.com/2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry...

    Comment linking /2018/02/26/speed-without-wizardry.html

    on “Maybe you don't need Rust and WASM to speed up your JS (2018)”
  26. mnemonik · 2009-09-22

    Submitted Macros in JavaScript as a story · 18 points

    HN discussion
  27. mbrubeck · 2014-12-05
    You can give scripts names using the sourceURL pragma: http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/59/ And I'm not sure what you mean about the source. I see the correct source when I debug evaled scripts in Firefox Nightly.

    Comment linking /weblog/59/

    on “Firebug 3 and Multiprocess Firefox”
  28. tjalfi · 2023-09-19

    Submitted Always Bump Downwards (2019) as a story · 13 points

    HN discussion
  29. mnemonik · 2013-10-23
    Please, don't skip the last step and make sure that you test them, too! http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/51/ :)

    Comment linking /weblog/51/

    on “Let’s get serious about ES6 generator functions”
  30. signa11 · 2019-11-02

    Submitted Always Bump Downwards as a story · 13 points

    HN discussion

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