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norswap
Personal blog · norswap.com · on HN as norswapprogrammingeconomics
norswap is a personal blog at norswap.com about programming and economics. Since 2015, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “Ruby's Dark Corners”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Ruby's Dark Corners2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-03-09
- Compiler Class2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-09
What Hacker News says?
Another alternative: Robind Hood Hashing http://norswap.com/robin-hood-hashing-jvm/ (Might actually be the same technique, it's not quite clear!)
Comment linking /robin-hood-hashing-jvm/
on “Why Hashbrown Does a Double Lookup”Submitted LaTeX Tooling Guide as a story · 167 points
HN discussionI wrote something in that vein, in which I defend checked exceptions (in contrast with unchecked exceptions): https://norswap.com/checked-exceptions/ > Summarized: people don't want checked exceptions because they are going to be abused by lazy programmers.
Comment linking /checked-exceptions/
on “You’re better off using Exceptions”Submitted Java Reflection, 1000x Faster as a story · 139 points
HN discussionI'm plugging my own Prolog tutorial: http://norswap.com/prolog-served-dry/ Might be useful for the folks who want to learn how the language ticks but don't have the time to go through a whole book. That being said, the book is pretty great! I recommend it.
Comment linking /prolog-served-dry/
on “The Art of Prolog, Second Edition”Submitted Compiler Class as a story · 131 points
HN discussionFor those that are interested in going further, I've written on the biggest teaching/insights of Charlie Munger here: https://norswap.com/munger/ In particular, here is a review/summary of his full list of 25 psychological tendencies: https://norswap.com/munger-psychology/
Comment linking /munger-psychology/
on “Psychology of Human Misjudgment”Submitted Principled Procedural Parsing (2019) [pdf] as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSee this article ( http://norswap.com/checked-exceptions/ ) on why exceptions are generally misused.
Comment linking /checked-exceptions/
on “Java Exception Handling”Submitted GameStop: Anatomy of a Short and Gamma Squeeze as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI concur. Shameless self plug about something I wrote about the first issue (documentation): http://norswap.com/ruby-specification-problem/
Comment linking /ruby-specification-problem/
on “A criticism of Ruby (2013)”Submitted Patterns of Software: Highlights as a story · 3 points
HN discussionCompared to most everything (PHP is probably worse, and there might some that I don't know). I'm not saying it's surprising because it's different, rather it's surprising because it doesn't seem to be very internally consistent. Lots of complicated rules instead of a few simple ones. As I pointed out in another comment, the way lookup is handled for instance is really a clusterfuck ( http://norswap.com/ruby-lookups-…
Comment linking /ruby-lookups-scopes/
on “An Interview with the Creator of Ruby (2001)”Submitted Freaking blockchains: How do they work? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI actually have a whole series of posts up: http://norswap.com/ruby-dark-corners/ The three topics (module linearization, scope lookups and method parameters) are constant source of wtfs as soon as you go beyond something basic.
Comment linking /ruby-dark-corners/
on “An Interview with the Creator of Ruby (2001)”Submitted Tutorial: Building Your Language with Graal and Truffle as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLocation: Brussels, Belgium Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Maybe Technologies: Java, Kotlin, C, Ruby, Javascript Résumé: http://norswap.com/resume/ Github: https://github.com/norswap/ Email: norswap@gmail.com I'm completing a PhD in CS (my thesis is on parsing) by September and I'm looking for new opportunities after that.
Comment linking /resume/
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2018)”Submitted Y Combinator and Trampolines in JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhile I agree exceptions should not be used for control flow except in the rarest of circumstances (every rule has exceptions — pun fully intended), I think checked exceptions are very useful. I wrote a whole article about this, way back when: https://norswap.com/checked-exceptions/ But for the tl;dr: checked exceptions represent somewhat expected issues, things like IO errors. There are two okay ways to handle thos…
Comment linking /checked-exceptions/
on “A better (than Optional) maybe for Java”Submitted Ruby's Dark Corners as a story · 2 points
HN discussionShameless plug for my compiler class, fully available on YouTube: https://norswap.com/compilers/
Comment linking /compilers/
on “Why Take a Compiler Course?”Submitted Ruby's Dark Corners as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Git Nested Repositories as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Most Useful Java Function as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted TypeScript Infers Type Variables as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted TypeScript Distributes Unions as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How imperative programming is ambiguous as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Random Generation Testing as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Tragedy of the Commons as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ruby's Dark Corners as a story · 1 points
HN discussion