Top all-time · #6077
Peter Zhu
Personal blog · blog.peterzhu.caprogramming
Peter Zhu's personal blog at blog.peterzhu.ca covers programming. Since 2020, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “How the garbage collector works in the Ruby programming language”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Peter Zhu's "A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side" series on Ruby's C internals. One commenter calls it a great series that helps with understanding concepts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Peter's personal blog mostly about programming and sometimes other stuff.
Most-linked posts?
- How the garbage collector works in the Ruby programming language4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-08-24
- A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-side3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-05
- Hunting Down the Ruby 'Inplace' Bug2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-21
- Open Source Is the Most Fragile and Most Resilient Ecosystem2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-10-18
- A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side (Part 4): Primitive Data Types2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-05
- 1.5 is the midpoint between 0 and infinity in Ruby2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-27
What Hacker News says?
There is this great serie of Peter Zhu too. https://blog.peterzhu.ca/ruby-c-ext/ Even if it's C extension, it helps understanding some concepts. But I agree with you.
Comment linking /ruby-c-ext/
on “Optimizing Ruby's JSON, Part 1”Submitted 1.5 is the midpoint between 0 and infinity in Ruby as a story · 237 points
HN discussionAnd the big caveat to this simple modification is that, if done naively, previously marked objects may become the sole referencers of non-garbage without being re-enumerated - potentially leading to the garbage-collection of non-garbage, which would be a serious bug. To fix this, you might have the live code that runs in-between the partial mark+sweeps mark objects to be re-swept as it runs. This adds overhead and c…
Comment linking /notes-on-ruby-gc/
on “Baby’s First Garbage Collector (2013)”Submitted Reworking Memory Management in CRuby [pdf] as a story · 45 points
HN discussionPart 4 of the series - "A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-side" https://blog.peterzhu.ca/ruby-c-ext/
Comment linking /ruby-c-ext/
on “A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side (Part 4): Primitive Data Types”Submitted Hunting Down the Ruby 'Inplace' Bug as a story · 33 points
HN discussionSubmitted 1.5 is the midpoint between 0 and infinity in Ruby as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side (Part 10): Benchmarking as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Open Source Is the Most Fragile and Most Resilient Ecosystem as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted How the garbage collector works in the Ruby programming language as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side (Part 4): Primitive Data Types as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side (Part 1): Hello World as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Open Source Is the Most Fragile and Most Resilient Ecosystem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Modular Garbage Collectors in Ruby [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Garbage Collection in Ruby as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side (Part 8): Exceptions and Error Handling as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ruby_memcheck Finds Memory Leaks in Native Gems as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted To Free or Not to Free: A Story About a Memory Leak in Ruby Strings as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side Part 6-Classes and Object Oriented Programming as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Garbage Collection in Ruby as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Garbage Collection in Ruby as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-Side: Primitive Data Types as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Rubyist's Walk Along the C-side as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A story about memory corruption in Ruby: The Ruby inplace bug as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
