Self-Study in August 2022

@LGB actually in V8 (JS engine used by google chrome) you need to jump through a lot of hoops to get switch case optimized: All the cases must be of same type. All the cases must either be string literals or 31-bit signed integer literals. And there must be less than 128 cases. And even after all those hoops, all you get is what you would have gotten with if-elses anyway (I.E. no jump tables or sth like that)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32381550

Tags: emulator, calculator, optimization, switch-statement, jump-table, javascript, js, v8, google, opcode, ti-84, imported, hacker-news

Id: fa4d5126-16e5-11ed-bc8f-0242ac110003 Read: Mon Aug 8 01:20:41 2022

To Become Wise, Do Less!

The need to integrate leisure in creative work. It is rephrased as “Leisure gives the scribe the chance to acquire wisdom”. This is a similar idea to Hammock Driven Development (Rich Hickey)

Tags: leisure, creativity, creative-work, work, henri-poincare, rich-hickey, hammock-driven-development, peter-drucker, quote, jideofor-onwugbenu

Id: 4e335ae4-16e4-11ed-a924-0242ac110003 Read: Mon, 08 Aug 2022 06:35:33 +0000

Uses for an old Android device

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32383835

Tags: imported, hacker-news

Id: b065e346-c1a0-11ed-a41d-0242ac110004 Read: Mon Aug 8 10:00:08 2022

De-anonymizing programmers from binaries (2017)

How to identify (de-anonymize) programmers (code authors) from its binaries

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32384147

Tags: arxiv, privacy, paper, imported, hacker-news

Id: 2e5f6d24-17da-11ed-9b75-0242ac110003 Read: Mon Aug 8 11:02:10 2022

The productivity tax you pay for context switching

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32390499

Tags: imported, hacker-news

Id: ae0f6900-c1a0-11ed-b21b-0242ac110004 Read: Mon Aug 8 20:18:05 2022

Doomed to repeat history? Lessons from the crypto wars of the 1990s (2015) [pdf]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32390605

Tags: imported, hacker-news

Id: b2c3a9d4-c1a0-11ed-89f9-0242ac110004 Read: Mon Aug 8 20:29:30 2022

The case against a C alternative

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32392161

Tags: imported, hacker-news

Id: abb54828-c1a0-11ed-b0ed-0242ac110004 Read: Mon Aug 8 22:56:18 2022

Statistically Rigorous Java Performance Evaluation

Java performance is far from being trivial to benchmark because it is affected by various factors such as the Java application, its input, the virtual machine, the garbage collector, the heap size, etc. In addition, non-determinism at run-time causes the execution time of a Java program to differ from run to run. There are a number of sources of non-determinism such as Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation and optimization in the virtual machine (VM) driven by timerbased method sampling, thread scheduling, garbage collection, and various system effects.

There exist a wide variety of Java performance evaluation methodologies used by researchers and benchmarkers. These methodologies differ from each other in a number of ways. Some report average performance over a number of runs of the same experiment; others report the best or second best performance observed; yet others report the worst. Some iterate the benchmark multiple times within a single VM invocation; others consider multiple VM invocations and iterate a single benchmark execution; yet others consider multiple VM invocations and iterate the benchmark multiple times.

This paper shows that prevalent methodologies can be misleading, and can even lead to incorrect conclusions. The reason is that the data analysis is not statistically rigorous. In this paper, we present a survey of xisting Java performance evaluation methodologies and discuss the importance of statistically rigorous data analysis for dealing with non-determinism. We advocate approaches to quantify startup as well as steady-state performance, and, in addition, we provide the JavaStats software to automatically obtain performance numbers in a rigorous manner. Although this paper focuses on Java performance evaluation, many of the issues addressed in this paper also apply to other programming languages and systems that build on a managed runtime system.

(copied from the abstract)

Tags: java, performance, statistics, statistically-relevant, confidence-interval

Id: dec739e6-17dd-11ed-9806-0242ac110003 Read: Tue, 09 Aug 2022 12:22:01 +0000

JNumPy: Writing high-performance C extensions for Python in minutes

A way of writing modules in Julia, then compile them to C, then connect them to Python

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32407451

Tags: julia, ffi, foreign-function-interface, cffi, python, connecting-languages, connection, integration, library, imported, hacker-news

Id: ba6208f8-188a-11ed-883f-0242ac110003 Read: Wed Aug 10 03:03:32 2022

Electric Vehicles Are Going to Suck; Here’s Why [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32409272

Tags: imported, hacker-news

Id: dd93cb7c-c1a4-11ed-adf1-0242ac110004 Read: Wed Aug 10 08:35:01 2022

PyO3

A way of connecting Python to Rust.

Tags: cffi, ffi, foreign-function-interface, rust, integration, connection, connecting-languages, library

Id: fd98378c-188a-11ed-bb0a-0242ac110003 Read: Wed, 10 Aug 2022 09:01:15 +0000

Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32437078

Tags: imported, hacker-news

Id: dfec522c-c1a4-11ed-8f09-0242ac110004 Read: Fri Aug 12 11:51:30 2022