Hacker News Reader

stephenbennyhaton Four limitations of Rust's borrow checker

"Malum est consilium, quod mutari non potest" you might say.

stephenbennyhaton Subverting the software interview (2021)

I worked for a while with a software engineer who insisted in encoding the value of the macro within the name:

  #define MAGIC_16 16

his rationale was that you had to go through all the uses and consider whether the change would cause an issue.

It takes all kinds.

stephenbennyhaton Books are physically changing because of inflation

Are you sure you don't need reading glasses? I find reading from screens (such as an iPad) physically much easier than reading from paper. Getting dedicated reading glasses made a huge difference to this and I found reading from paper became enjoyable again.

stephenbennyhaton Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn safety-critical C/C++ coding from?

Start with "Safer C" by Les Hatton. It is getting on a bit now but still a worthwhile read.

stephenbennyhaton The most brilliant bookshops in the world

I miss the days when Cambridge (UK) was Heffers, Heffers, and Heffers. The main Heffers on Trinity Street, children's Heffers, Art and Architecture Heffers, Heffers Maps, Heffers Art Goods, Heffers Paperbacks and Videos, Heffers in the Grafton Centre. I've probably missed a few!

stephenbennyhaton Ask HN: I love coding, but I hate web development. How can I “jump ship”?

>Embedded systems engineers command great salaries

This isn't something I've noticed. In the UK at least Embedded tends to be a sensible career, with reasonable work/life-balance. But salaries also tend to be in the "reasonable" range. Maybe the situation is different elsewhere.

stephenbennyhaton Optimizations in C++ Compilers

Did you see the sumToX() example in the paper?

stephenbennyhaton The Parker “51” (2018)

I also have a Lamy 2000 and a Vanishing Point. For a long time I didn't use the Lamy very much as it was scratchy compared to the VP. At some point I decided to stick with it and now it gets used most days for work notes and the like. With use it has got much smoother -- it might be worth persisting. (The VP is still more practical for everyday use but just doesn't hold much ink -- and so tends to run out at inconvenient times.)

stephenbennyhaton Cog: Use pieces of Python code as generators in your source files

Like erb (https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.6.2/libdoc/erb/rdoc/ERB.html).

stephenbennyhaton European Medicines Agency (EMA) closes London office with loss of 900 jobs

For a while David Davis seemed to think the UK could hold on to the EMA. See https://pharmaphorum.com/news/uk-keeping-european-medicines-... for example.

stephenbennyhaton Some Lisp books (2012)

I agree entirely about Lisp in Small Pieces. It's one of those books that I've attempted to read many times and never get more than half way through.

stephenbennyhaton Field notes: London, England (2018)

'The people I hung out with while there were bitter towards the required TV licenses and "religion" for NHS in public discourse. Curious how widespread this attitude is.'

Not very widespread at all in my experience.

stephenbennyhaton Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2013)

Amantys (www.amantys.com) - Cambridge, UK

http://www.amantys.com/careers/junior-software-developer

Looking for an embedded software developer with interest on working down to the metal, but also linux kernel, apps, scripting and so on. To join a small friendly team in a nice office in Cambridge UK.