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eterpson Alan Kay: Shannon gave us a way of dealing with noisy channels [video]

This document demonstrates that nicely IMO:

https://miasap.se/obnc/data-abstraction.html

The examples near the top use the more familiar OOP approach, while the example at the bottom uses message sending.

eterpson GPT-6 Astra in code review: Gains, privacy, and cost

Which VM technology do you use?

eterpson GPT-6 Astra in code review: Gains, privacy, and cost

But with full blown e2e browser tests the test suite duration can go through the roof. How do you deal with that?

eterpson Revo Programming Language

Discussion on lobste.rs : https://lobste.rs/s/towfrz/revo_programming_language

eterpson Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2026)

Open Education Applications / Neon | Senior/Lead Platform & DevOps Engineer, Senior Frontend Engineer, Senior Full-Stack Engineer | Utrecht, The Netherlands | HYBRID | DUTCH REQUIRED

Please note: working proficiency in Dutch is strictly required for these roles, and we kindly ask for no automated applications. The rest of this post will continue in Dutch.

Wij zijn een non-profit die zich inzet om lesmateriaal voor scholen beter, betaalbaarder en flexibeler te maken, in zowel digitale als gedrukte vorm.

Werktijden en kantoordagen zijn flexibel en worden in overleg bepaald op basis van de rol. Wij bieden een competitief salaris.

Technologiestack: Git monorepo, TypeScript, Yjs en React, een beetje Python, OpenTofu/Terraform, Scaleway, managed PostgreSQL en managed Kubernetes.

Openstaande rollen:

- Senior/Lead Platform & DevOps Engineer

- Senior Backend Engineer/Architect

- Senior Frontend Engineer

- Senior Full-Stack Engineer

E-mail jobs[at]openeducation.foundation met (HN) + de functienaam in het onderwerp, samen met een korte introductie en een link naar je LinkedIn-profiel en/of GitHub. Als er van beide kanten een goede match lijkt te zijn, plan ik graag een kennismakingsgesprek in.

https://openeducation.foundation | https://www.neon.nl

eterpson Reticulum – Decentralized Mesh Network

> I've seen videos of people using it for USB to USB communication.

How would that work? Do you have a link?

eterpson Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2026)

Open Education Applications / Neon | Senior/Lead Platform & DevOps Engineer, Senior Frontend Engineer, Senior Full-Stack Engineer | Utrecht, The Netherlands | HYBRID

We are a non-profit working to make teaching materials for schools better, more affordable, and more flexible, in both digital and print formats.

Working hours and office cadence are flexible and agreed based on the role. Dutch proficiency is required. We offer highly competitive compensation.

Technology stack: Git monorepo, TypeScript, Yjs and React, some Python, OpenTofu/Terraform, Scaleway, managed PostgreSQL, and managed Kubernetes.

Open roles:

- Senior/Lead Platform & DevOps Engineer

- Senior Backend Engineer/Architect

- Senior Frontend Engineer

- Senior Full-Stack Engineer

https://openeducation.foundation | https://www.neon.nl

eterpson FreeOberon – Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language

Oberon System 3 works on Raspberry Pi:

https://github.com/rochus-keller/OberonSystem3Native

eterpson Show HN: Epiq – Distributed Git based issue tracker TUI

> What you can do is use commands like ":peek prev" (takes you to the previous edit), ":peek 1h", or other time-travel commands to inspect previous states and manually recover overwritten changes if needed.

Thanks, I think that would work fine in most cases if you can open your editor with the 'prev' version and the current version in 2 panes (or in diff mode).

eterpson Show HN: Epiq – Distributed Git based issue tracker TUI

> Conflict handling model: Later events take precedence when conflicts occur

Do I understand correctly that if 2 people add a lot of information to one issue only one of them 'wins' and becomes visible? Or is it more subtle?

If only the latter one becomes visible, how do you get to the edits of the other person and 'merge' it again?

eterpson It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

> all you need is to write to an on-duty officer and it will be unblocked

What if the pretty advanced e-government system decides it will not be unblocked?

eterpson Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML

I agree, Cucumber works really well with LLMs.

> I use a mix of Markdown and Gherkin

Gherkin also has a Markdown based syntax that is not well known:

https://github.com/cucumber/gherkin/blob/main/MARKDOWN_WITH_...

I prefer that to the 'verbose' original syntax. MDG also renders nicely in code forges.

eterpson Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

This is great! I remember running System 3 on a 386 back when MS-DOS was king.

eterpson TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

I actually agree with that. And I enjoy the fact that TUIs are becoming popular. But there is more to it than just the 'vibe'.

eterpson TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

If you think the 'mouse-clickable' aspect is bothering me, you missed my point entirely.

eterpson TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

Sure, but my point was that UX matters for TUIs. A TUI with a UX that fits its paradigm , again like lazygit, works great over SSH.

eterpson TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

This is nonsensical, there is nothing textual about the UIs being shown here. It doesn't stop being a GUI if you have a 1:1 representation of the concept within character cells.

The UX actually matters, and TUIs are generally built for effectiveness and power (lazygit being an excellent example). But once you start adding mouse clickable tabs, buttons, checkboxes etc. you left the UX for TUIs behind and applied the UX expected for GUIs, it has become a GUI larping as a TUI.

eterpson Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English

> I could see a world in which we're all just writing tests in the form of something like Gherkin though.

That works great in practice, Gherkin even has a markdown dialect [1].

If you combine it with a tool like aico [2] you can have a really effective development workflow.

[1] https://github.com/cucumber/gherkin/blob/main/MARKDOWN_WITH_...

[2] https://github.com/jurriaan/aico

eterpson Agentic Engineering Patterns

You could have a look at: https://github.com/jurriaan/aico

It does 2 things that are very important, 1: reviewing should not be done last, but during the process and 2: plans should result into verifyable specs, preferably in a natural language so you can avoid locking yourself into specific implementation details (the "how") too early.

eterpson What AI coding costs you

You could give https://github.com/jurriaan/aico a try.

eterpson Show HN: Now I Get It – Translate scientific papers into interactive webpages

https://nowigetit.us/pages/8cf08b76-c5bc-4a7b-bdb4-a0c15089e...

The actual explanation (using code blocks) is almost impossible to read and comprehend.

eterpson Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

I use my_ as a prefix.

eterpson ASCII-Driven Development

Would love to hear more about this approach.

eterpson Show HN: FP-pack – Functional pipelines in TypeScript without monads

While I like the concept, the side-effect pattern might be difficult for the average developer to understand (without fp-pack knowledge) in a shared codebase:

https://github.com/superlucky84/fp-pack?tab=readme-ov-file#s...

Still, this approach is very useful for most business logic, too bad most programming languages don't provide a nice syntax for this.

eterpson Charm Ruby – Glamorous Terminal Libraries for Ruby

What are popular charm/bubbletea based TUIs? I use TUIs often, but for some reason none of them are based on charm/bubbletea? Might be coincidence though.

While I appreciate Charm's aesthetics, I worry it leans too heavily on GUI paradigms, like popovers and buttons, rather than prioritizing the optimal keyboard efficiency used in traditional text-based interfaces.

eterpson Incremental Backups of Gmail Takeouts

Maybe this could be helpful? -> https://github.com/pimalaya/neverest

eterpson Moss: a Rust Linux-compatible kernel in 26,000 lines of code

Wait until they get to the networking layer; you're going to hate what Vint Cerf did in the 70s :)

eterpson The Titania Programming Language

Ada, Nim, Pascal. I think C++ also offers it with a specific syntax.

Rust also offers it, but you need to specify it on the call side as well.

eterpson The Titania Programming Language

> But I am using Oberon-07 as base, and I might deviate from it quite soon too.

I am curious about your thoughts on var parameters (i.e. mutable references), as in:

    proc increment(var x: int)
    begin
      x := x + 1
    end

    var i: int

    begin
      i := 10
      increment(i)  // i is now 11
    end

eterpson Materialized views are obviously useful

Isn't this wat streaming databases like Materialize and RisingWave do?