Top all-time · #3396
Paul Smith
Personal blog · pauladamsmith.com/blog · on HN as paulsmithprogrammingsystems
Paul Smith's personal blog at pauladamsmith.com covers programming and systems. Since 2010, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 37 times, most often “How to get started with the LLVM C API”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Paul Smith's articles on the Redis source code, including a guide to working on it and a getting-started piece on the LLVM C API, plus his history post on the Direct File and Healthcare.gov launches.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Paul Smith, software engineer, programmer, Ad Hoc CTO and co-founder
Most-linked posts?
- How to get started with the LLVM C API4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-01-20
- Redis: under the hood3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-03-08
- The ten year anniversary of the Healthcare.gov rescue3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-10-20
- More Redis internals: Tracing a GET & SET2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-10
- The DNC's voter registration app is now free and open-source software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-29
What Hacker News says?
Take a look at Redis sometime. You might want to actually work on it a bit to help internalize what you're reading. Here are a couple of articles that might help get you started: http://pauladamsmith.com/articles/redis-under-the-hood.html http://www.starkiller.net/2013/05/03/hacking-redis-adding-in...
Comment linking /articles/redis-under-the-hood.html
on “Ask HN: What source code is worth studying? ”Submitted Looking at your program’s structure in Go 1.7 as a story · 238 points
HN discussionhttp://www.heychinaski.com/blog/2013/10/14/a-look-at-the-red... https://pauladamsmith.com/articles/redis-under-the-hood.html https://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2011/03/redis_get_set.html http://redis.io/topics/internals
Comment linking /blog/2011/03/redis_get_set.html
on “Teaching C”Submitted Classic 8×8-pixel B&W Mac patterns as a story · 182 points
HN discussionA good reminder to read about how it almost didn't turn out alright. * https://time.com/10228/obamas-trauma-team/ * https://www.pauladamsmith.com/blog/2023/10/the-10-year-anniv... (And of course the related Hacker News threads.) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37957152
Comment linking /blog/2023/10/the-10-year-anniversary-of-the-healthcare.gov-rescue.html
on “IRS has launched its free tax filing service, Direct File, in 12 states”Submitted Fixing bufferbloat on your home network with OpenBSD 6.2 or newer as a story · 163 points
HN discussionAs a user, I assume the site is not going to do the right thing with my password. That's why I securely generate a new password for each site using a master passphrase. Oplop is a good, zero-install tool for doing this. http://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2010/12/oplop.html
Comment linking /blog/2010/12/oplop.html
on “Newegg stores your password in plaintext”Submitted Redis: under the hood as a story · 85 points
HN discussionThis issue came up again recently with the Democrats' voter registration application ( http://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2013/01/dnc_voter_reg_foss.htm... ). The take-home is don't do that. Don't modify a standard open source contract on a whim as it will inevitably cause serious hassle later. Okay if you have some major ethical/legal objection, then just beware it will cause some major hassle. JSON is an exception. It…
Comment linking /blog/2013/01/dnc_voter_reg_foss.html
on “I give permission for IBM [...] to use JSLint for evil.”Submitted Redis: under the hood as a story · 84 points
HN discussionI rather understood it that they wanted to know whether there is a C API to use LLVM, so perhaps something like this: https://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2015/01/how-to-get-started-wi...
Comment linking /blog/2015/01/how-to-get-started-with-llvm-c-api.html
on “IR is better than assembly (2013)”Submitted The DNC's voter registration app is now free and open-source software as a story · 67 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in one of these articles: http://pauladamsmith.com/articles/redis-under-the-hood.html http://blog.togo.io/how-to/adding-interval-sets-to-redis They have both been discussed before though.
Comment linking /articles/redis-under-the-hood.html
on “A quick look at the Redis source code”Submitted How to get started with the LLVM C API as a story · 65 points
HN discussionI am not sure what is meant by this. It certainly seems to have QoS in the form of the queue directive. It works for me for limiting buffer bloat on my VDSL model upstream. The defaults work well for my VOIP stuff so that all I have is this in my pf.conf: queue outq on re1 flows 1024 bandwidth 3000K max 3000K qlimit 1024 default I think the magic is in the "flows" part. Added: Relevant articles: * https://dataswamp.…
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/fixing-bufferbloat-on-your-home-network-with-openbsd-6.2-or-newer.html
on “What every IT person needs to know about OpenBSD Part 3: That packet filter”Submitted Parsing and formatting date/time in Go as a story · 41 points
HN discussionShould be this url instead: https://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2015/01/how-to-get-started-wi...
Comment linking /blog/2015/01/how-to-get-started-with-llvm-c-api.html
on “How to get started with the LLVM C API”Submitted More Redis internals: Tracing a GET & SET as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI realize this isn’t what you’re arguing for, but as a cautionary anecdote on this topic: Paul alludes to it in his post about Healthcare.gov from the other day, but this was apparently one of the major parts of the failure there - endless lines of code generated from UML diagrams, making reading the code hard and things like “can we add a trace statement here” difficult. Optimising for diagrams-as-source-of-truth h…
Comment linking /blog/2023/10/the-10-year-anniversary-of-the-healthcare.gov-rescue.html
on “The C4 model for visualising software architecture”Submitted Classic 8×8-pixel B&W Mac patterns as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cheatsheet for jj's builtin diff editor as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Let `jj absorb` help you keep a clean commit history as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to get started with the LLVM C API as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Redis under the hood (2010) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted More Redis internals: Tracing a GET & SET as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Del.icio.us is dead, long live del.icio.us as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Simple max clients implementation for a Go net/http handler as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Redis: under the hood as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Use Oplop for your web site passwords as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Jj-Ified Fork of Superpowers as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
