Top all-time · #2389
Sy Brand
Personal blog · blog.tartanllama.xyzprogramming
Sy Brand's personal blog at blog.tartanllama.xyz covers programming. Since 2017, 31 different Hacker News readers have linked it 41 times, most often “Writing a Linux Debugger (2017)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-05, and you can follow it by feed.
Personal blog for Sy Brand.
Most-linked posts?
- Writing a Linux Debugger (2017)11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2018-05-10
- Learning C++3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-09-04
- Spaceship Operator3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-08-24
- Initialization in C++ is bonkers (2017)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-10-20
- Do compilers take inline as a hint?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-01-26
- Writing a Linux Debugger2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-21
- /sycl/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-25
- Writing a Linux Debugger Part 1: Setup2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-23
What Hacker News says?
I really don't see how Rust has most of C++'s problems. Slow compiler, sure, though things are changing. Most complex languages in history? Only if you squint at it from 10000 feet and ignore what the complexity is doing. C++ has approximately eighteen different partially-overlapping categories of variable initialization, many of which are legacy-but-still-used! [0] And some of those categories have changed their bo…
Comment linking /initialization-is-bonkers/
on “Assorted Thoughts on Zig and Rust”Submitted Initialization in C++ is bonkers (2017) as a story · 191 points
HN discussionCheck out this recent post by Simon Brand on this subject - https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/learning-cpp/
Comment linking /learning-cpp/
on “C++17 is formally approved”Submitted Writing a Linux Debugger Part 2: Breakpoints as a story · 142 points
HN discussionHaving started using the Internet in the 90's, and thus still remembering Geocities-era websites, I loved that they did this as a webring ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring ): each blog post has a link to the next one, making a singly-linked circular list. Starting with this one, we have: - http://www.bfilipek.com/2018/04/deprecating-pointers.html - http://www.modernescpp.com/index.php/no-new-new - https://www.…
Comment linking /no-pointers/
on “Deprecating Raw Pointers in C++20”Submitted Do compilers take inline as a hint? as a story · 66 points
HN discussionIf you are interested in debuggers, there was a post series by Sy Brand a few years back: https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/ Eli Bendersky also wrote about debuggers (I think his post is a great place to start): https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2011/01/23/how-debuggers-work-... I was fascinated with debuggers a while back exactly because they were so mysterious to me. I then wrote a ptrace deb…
Comment linking /writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/
on “Demystifying Debuggers”Submitted Functional exceptionless error-handling with optional and expected as a story · 55 points
HN discussionHave you had a look at SYCL? I found a nice intro at [1]. Hopefully at some point soon there's an implementation of it for nVidia GPUs, too; right now I've only come across support for Intel and AMD OpenCL using Codeplay's compiler [2]. But it seems quite promising! [1] https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/sycl/ [2] https://www.codeplay.com/products/computesuite/computecpp
Comment linking /sycl/
on “Generic GPU Kernels in Julia”Submitted Writing a Linux Debugger (2017) as a story · 20 points
HN discussionAlso there's work towards a pure C++ abstraction layer for programming these accelerators, called SYCL [0]. It lets you define your compute kernels using normal C++ lambdas or functions, and then automatically infers the data dependencies to do the kernel execution. In particular, it provides an implementation of the C++ "Parallel STL" [1] (some intro slides at [2]), which in turn provides "execution policies" for v…
Comment linking /sycl/
on “Sorting with GPUs: A Survey”Submitted Spaceship Operator as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSee also the "Writing a Linux Debugger" series of posts in which a source-level debugger is implemented: https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/
Comment linking /writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/
on “How Does a C Debugger Work? (2014)”Submitted Writing a Linux Debugger Part 1: Setup (2017) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis was published earlier and in a much more readable format at: https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/c++/2017/01/20/initialization-i...
Comment linking /c++/2017/01/20/initialization-is-bonkers/
on “Initialization in C++ is Bonkers”Submitted Writing a Linux Debugger as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYes, the "Writing a Linux Debugger" series in C++. https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/ And more generally there is "The Debugging Book" in python. https://www.debuggingbook.org/
Comment linking /writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/
on “Writing a Debugger from Scratch: Breakpoints”Submitted Writing a Linux Debugger as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI really liked https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/ I learned a lot.
Comment linking /writing-a-linux-debugger-setup/
on “Writing a Debugger from Scratch: Breakpoints”Submitted Writing a Linux Debugger as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLess known fact is that it's called C++23 because there are 23 ways to initialize a variable. Of course, it's a joke. In reality C++23 has only 20 ways to initialize a variable: https://www.cppstories.com/2022/init-string-options/ https://blog.tartanllama.xyz/initialization-is-bonkers/
Comment linking /initialization-is-bonkers/
on “Const vs. constexpr vs. consteval vs. constinit in C++20”Submitted Writing a Linux Debugger as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing a linux debugger as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted C++ Spaceship Operator as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Learning C++ as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Guaranteed copy elision in C++17 does not elide copies as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Spaceship Operator as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing a Linux Debugger as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Learning C++ as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Accelerating your C++ on the GPU with SYCL as a story · 2 points
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