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Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

https://rutgerbregman.substack.com/p/10-signs-of-fascism-america-has-all
1•fredski42•3m ago•0 comments

What the FDA won't tell you about your medications (transcript, Propublica)

https://www.propublica.org/podcast/what-fda-wont-tell-you-generic-drugs-safety
1•abawany•4m ago•0 comments

I built a fake Phantom wallet generator

https://larpwallet.app
1•Jhoney•5m ago•0 comments

Neptune: Direct3D Virtualization for QEMU

https://blog.getutm.app/2026/introducing-neptune-direct3d-virtualization-for-qemu/
1•oofdere•5m ago•0 comments

From raw logs to programmable EVM execution intelligence

https://blog.bridgexapi.io/the-anatomy-of-programmable-evm-execution-intelligence
1•Bridgexapi•8m ago•0 comments

kharp – k version 3 Language Interpreter in C#

https://github.com/ERufian/ksharp
1•tosh•10m ago•0 comments

2ality blog: temporarily offline due to AI stealing work

https://2ality.com/
2•mmarian•14m ago•1 comments

Domain Knowledge Is the Leverage

https://log.beshr.com/domain-knowledge-is-the-leverage/
1•beshrkayali•15m ago•0 comments

Project Prism |Fullstack Engineer – Abu Dhabi (Onsite) – Full-Time – Presight.ai

1•ylapin•17m ago•0 comments

Military Snipers Are Being Put Out of a Job by Drones

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/military-snipers-are-being-put-out-of-a-job-by-drones-ae85a271
3•Michelangelo11•20m ago•0 comments

A cheap fix that saves the AI $400M dollars a year and brings 4B people online

https://codecai.net/
2•Zombwaffle•24m ago•0 comments

SIMD, cache and CPU internals with the expert Daniel Lemire [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqdFvYeMW5o
1•tosh•25m ago•0 comments

Anthropic just admitted AI is bullshit [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juHv_Vi4giU
1•kshri24•27m ago•0 comments

Privacy Policy Changelog

https://www.fsf.org/about/free-software-foundation-privacy-policy/privacy-policy-changelog
1•toluc•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PathFinder – Map every path to your goal, then execute it step by step

https://pathfinderofficial.vercel.app/
2•SidVikJay•30m ago•0 comments

Musk vs. Altman week 3: Elon Musk and Sam Altman traded blows over each other's

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/15/1137357/musk-v-altman-week-3/
3•joozio•45m ago•0 comments

Palantir's SaaS is dead claim is a warning shot for founders

https://startupfortune.com/palantirs-saas-is-dead-claim-is-a-warning-shot-for-founders/
2•01-_-•47m ago•0 comments

The US Is Using AI to Hunt Down Insider Trading on Polymarket

https://www.wired.com/story/polymarket-insider-trading-cftc-michael-selig-interview/
3•01-_-•49m ago•1 comments

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3105440/Heroes_of_Might_and_Magic_Olden_Era/
5•doener•51m ago•0 comments

Old English Pronunciation: A Comprehensive Reconstruction [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNQo54Ddte8
1•hnlyman•53m ago•0 comments

Team-memory – your team's shared brain, auto-built from Claude Code CLI or UI

https://github.com/AndrewSkea/team-memory
1•aski_dev•57m ago•0 comments

Abseil Common Libraries (C++)

https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp
1•tosh•1h ago•0 comments

Gaussian Splatting for Dummies

https://darshanmakwana412.github.io/2026/04/gaussian-splatting/
2•martianvoid•1h ago•0 comments

AI Playground – Let AI agents play safely

https://gitlab.com/cryptomilk/ai-playground
1•cryptomilk•1h ago•1 comments

PyCon US 2026 Packaging Summit Recap

https://discuss.python.org/t/packaging-summit-at-pycon-us-2026/106911
1•gaborbernat•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: KoalaNews – how big is this story, really?

https://koalanews.app
1•koala-news•1h ago•1 comments

AI-generated code is 'pain waiting to happen'

https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/16/ai-generated-code-is-pain-waiting-to-happen/5241574
5•abdelhousni•1h ago•0 comments

We Are All Rankers Now: Or Why the Internet Has Turned to Shit

https://grumpywelshman.com/we-are-all-rankers-now-or-why-the-internet-has-turned-to-shit/
4•dave-x•1h ago•0 comments

Base64 encoding and decoding at almost the speed of a memory copy

https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.05109
1•tosh•1h ago•0 comments

Voltaire, the Entrepreneur

https://www.linkandth.ink/p/voltaire-the-entrepreneur
2•helsinkiandrew•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Every programming language has its 'killer' domain

https://huijzer.xyz/posts/67
34•todsacerdoti•12mo ago

Comments

throwaway519•12mo ago
For Javascript, is that resources or sane dependencies? Can one have two?
dedup•12mo ago
To me, Python is a great language for anything that needs to be written quickly and executed a few times and/or on a small scale. I'm a C/low-level guy primarily but I write a lot of Python code (probably more than C these days) for various purposes, and none of it is related to statistics or machine learning.
morepedantic•12mo ago
Because you haven't extrapolated from Python's niche. Those domains are derived from Python's accessibility. Python might be the most accessible big boy language.
andirk•12mo ago
I'm currently learning Python for my ML/Tensorflow online coirses. I thought bc I know C++ it'd be super easy but theres a lot of differences between them. Turns out an "easier" big boy language still has a bit of a learning curve
morepedantic•12mo ago
Python: dynamically typed, structurally typed, garbage collected, exceptions C++: statically typed, nominally typed, manual memory management, exceptions

It's a big jump from C++ to Python. If you want a midway, use Go.

egamirorrim•12mo ago
Some convenient omissions here, how about Scala? Kotlin?
viccis•12mo ago
Scala was absolutely killing the "we need JVM because all our Hadoop era tech uses it but we're a new generation of JVM data tooling and so we need a language in which the functional programming based abstractions we're using for our data processing are first class language features" niche for a while in the late 2010s.

Was a really big part of Kafka and Spark ecosystems until they supported Python well enough that a lot of people just stuck with that instead of teaching their devs to write Scala.

Larrikin•12mo ago
Scala screwed up by having no filter. Implementing every idea someone with a PhD thought of from the entire history of programming seems like a good idea until you have to use the language. Everybody doing whatever they want because of the freedom and no guidelines didn't help. And build times killed it

Kotlin feels like it has a much better plan and it seems like so far it won't suffer the same death.

winwang•12mo ago
I agree about no filter*, I disagree with your reasoning. Scala (2) as a language is quite simple. The complexity came from the incredible power of its building blocks (e.g. implicits and path-dependent types). The lack of filter, as I felt, was moreso on how different two Scala codebases could be. That was part of the point though -- a scalable language, which means changing to the needs of each team.
pdimitar•12mo ago
Which also means less transferable knowledge. That killed it for me. If you muscle through it you'll get there, sure, but in the meantime I found languages that have smaller surface, are just as (or more) productive, and you can be onboarded in a project in half an afternoon.
rienbdj•12mo ago
This is true but what’s odd is that Java has better functional programming support than Python.
notpushkin•12mo ago
Could you elaborate?
Larrikin•12mo ago
A simple example is that people who start with Python think the list comprehension with all the colons and negative numbers is actually good instead of a hindrance. Python relies on pandas, Polars, and Pyfunctional to prop up a bad language design choice.
notpushkin•12mo ago
List comprehensions look like this:

  [f(x) for x in xs]
I think you mean the slice syntax (`xs[5:7]`). I don’t see how this is a bad design choice, though.
rienbdj•12mo ago
Take a look at F# for a superior list comprehension design.
rienbdj•12mo ago
In Java you can write multiline anonymous functions and in Python you can’t (well, not in a reasonable way).

Java has immutable bindings with the final keyword.

Java variables are lexically scoped, which discourages mutation of globals.

valorzard•12mo ago
C# is also THE language for game developers. No other language even comes close, besides like C++
seabrookmx•12mo ago
It also runs on non "Microsoft systems."

I've been writing C# for over a decade, and 99% of it has deployed in Docker containers to Linux VM's (via k8s etc).

This post seems nonsensical.

notpushkin•12mo ago
It doesn’t say you can’t, or shouldn’t, use these languages for other purposes.

Edit: nvm, see jibal’s comment below

jibal•12mo ago
"in my experience each time I try to use a language in the wrong domain, it's much harder and often practically infeasible."
notpushkin•12mo ago
Totally missed it, sorry!
worthless-trash•12mo ago
More games are written in javascript than any other language, sad but true.
oliverdzedou•12mo ago
C# is definitely popular for game development, but saying no other language comes close does not seem to be true. Looking at the most popular game engines and frameworks, it seems to be about as represented as anything else.

Game engines: Unreal - C++, Unity - C#, Godot - GDScript (Python) + second-class C# support

Frameworks: Raylib - C, Bevy - Rust, Love2D - Lua, Monogame - C#, Phaser - JS, PyGame - Python

We don't know for sure what AAA companies rolling their own engines use, but the industry standard would be written in C++, exposing C++ for programmers and Lua for non-programmers/modders.

valorzard•12mo ago
I probably should have mentioned Lua, you’re right. The big three for game dev is C++, C#, and Lua.

C# is basically the midpoint between Lua and C++ which is why it’s so popular with game devs imo

maz1b•12mo ago
Elixir/Phoenix? Haskell? Erlang? F#? Crystal?

I also don't agree with the fact that ruby is just like PHP.. for web backends.

notpushkin•12mo ago
Elixir/Phoenix → web, various parallel processing stuff?

Haskell → dunno, but it’s pretty cool

Erlang → dunno again, maybe some low-level stuff for Elixir?

F# → business apps for MS when you get sick from C#

Crystal → web, I guess?

Ruby is good for web, but it’s also useful when metaprogramming tricks work for you in your particular domain. Same with Python (it’s also insanely good for web!).

rienbdj•12mo ago
F# is strictly better than C# if (huge if) you have a team that knows both languages.
notpushkin•12mo ago
It’s an important caveat, yeah!
asplake•12mo ago
Erlang → scalable real-time systems, eg telecoms
notpushkin•12mo ago
Yes, though could you perhaps use Elixir there as well? (Sorry, I’m still largely ignorant to this space, but would love to learn more!)
pdimitar•12mo ago
Elixir has a ton of really good libraries and a very active community. Erlang's is trying to catch up and they have my support as well but for the moment I find Elixir easier to deliver a full app to production.
notpushkin•12mo ago
Can’t you use Elixir libraries in Erlang? https://elixir-lang.org/crash-course.html#adding-elixir-to-e...

(and that being said, you can also use Erlang libraries in Elixir, so there’s a path for incremental adoption)

pdimitar•12mo ago
You mostly can use Elixir libraries in Erlang but due to how Elixir macros are done and their pervasiveness, the usefulness of that feature is effectively limited. F.ex. Phoenix and Ecto, both extremely prominent and important libraries in the ecosystem, make heavy use of macros due to their nature and feature-set. And they are unusable in Erlang code.

Or at least that was the case some year ago. Haven't checked lately. I know there are ongoing efforts towards convergence.

notpushkin•12mo ago
Hmm, yeah, I think if you want to integrate Phoenix into an existing Erlang application, you’ll probably want to use Elixir as the “main” language and use existing Erlang code from the Elixir app. Or if you really need to run Phoenix inside Erlang, you could make a clean cut and write a portion of the app in Elixir, with an easy way to call it (e.g. start a server) from Erlang.

Neither option allows you to use Phoenix without writing Elixir code, though. But since you’re integrating an Elixir lib, writing at least some glue code doesn’t seem like a big deal?

(I’ve got to say that I’m not proficient at all neither in Erlang nor in Elixir – I’ve played around with both, but nothing serious.)

simonmic•12mo ago
Haskell → High-assurance applications and prototyping/research.
ghplreq•12mo ago
Rust needs to focus in systems programming domain as top priority and get better at working with C++, or it risks staying a niche language. Without strong support for existing C++ code, it could eventually be passed up by other languages with better C++ integration — even if those end up being technically worse, like Carbon,Zig or something similar.
Hammershaft•12mo ago
I don't agree that Zig is (on paper, it's still alpha) technically worse, it just has radically different goals for a systems lang than Rust
pdimitar•12mo ago
In a world where we have a constant stream of memory unsafety CVEs, Rust seems superior.

You might not be worried about these and that's okay but it's a real measurable factor by which you can evaluate languages.

MyOutfitIsVague•12mo ago
Rust isn't a niche language by a long shot anymore.

CXX[0] is fine. Personally, I just always use a C ABI to communicate between the two. I've had to do it for every other language anyway. Languages that have native C++ interop are significantly more rare than ones that don't. Most languages have some way of talking to C, though.

[0]: https://cxx.rs/

ghplreq•12mo ago
C++ interop still far from perfect , check out ClickHouse blog: https://clickhouse.com/blog/rust
creshal•12mo ago
I wonder what the killer domain for brainfuck is.
cadamsdotcom•12mo ago
It's right there in the name :)
0x000xca0xfe•12mo ago
When you spilt so much coffee over your keyboard that only a couple keys are still working... then finally your brainfuck skills will come in handy.
rienbdj•12mo ago
What this skips over is that some languages are better than all others in a domain, sometimes multiple domains. And also some languages are not best in class in any domain.

Would you pick Brainfuck over Java for anything (real)?

defrost•12mo ago
If alternative programming exercise counts as a domain, then yes ..

along with Turing Tape machine coding, corewars, that one from Knuth ..

outside of that domain of interest, not so much.

But that is one domain of interest.

It's also true that real world industrial scale dam control isn't a killer application domain for Brainf*ck .. but FGS, have you seen many SCADA implementations?

chiffaa•12mo ago
> Only Ruby lists Ruby on Rails as its killer app, but that's basically it.

Concrete examples: Dart with Flutter, Elixir with Phoenix,

Arguable ones: JavaScript and browsers, Go and Kubernetes

I kind of disagree with the "killer app" concept because most languages can work in a lot of domains, but there are more examples if you're willing to think about it

setopt•12mo ago
I think it’s more that languages fail to go mainstream unless they have a killer domain. Lots of languages don’t.
abeppu•12mo ago
I think the thing missing here is that the killer domain isn't necessarily intrinsic to the language or its design. Some languages are designed for specific domains, but some find their domain based on large projects that happened after the language was out in the world. My understanding is rails came almost a decade after Ruby, numpy etc came well after python. This post says that you shouldn't try to use a language outside of its domain, but if everyone believed that, languages would never find a new domain.
condwanaland•12mo ago
I strongly think that R has outgrown just having statistics as its killer feature. The killer feature of R is data analysis

I have yet to see any software that rivals dplyr, data.table, and ggplot2 in the balance of power and ease of use. It also has all the auxiliary packages you need to fetch your data (DBI, httr, rvest), model it if necessary (parsnip, caret) and visualise it (ggplot2, plotly, shiny)

I know python is more popular here but I would choose R in a heartbeat 19 times out of 20

andirk•12mo ago
Is Python especially popular because of its easier learning curve?
haiku2077•12mo ago
I'd also say because of its price (especially vs MATLAB and Mathematica) and the huge ecosystem of libraries for basically every scientific domain.
chneu•12mo ago
Those libs likely only exist because of how easy python is to learn. So, snake tail situation maybe.
haiku2077•12mo ago
Well, a lot of those libraries are C libraries that have Python bindings.
user32489318•12mo ago
I haven’t used matlab for 10+ years, but back then Matlab used to provide engineering packages for vibrations and non-linear models approximations, I’d imagine the effort of going Python/ open source code to just to redefine your model for both purposes and then validate and verify the results would be a 10-50 fold cost of paying for a license
condwanaland•12mo ago
Possibly. I think R is actually easier to learn for people who have never studied or done programming before.

1. It's easier to get up and running as RStudio is much more 'batteries included' than other popular IDEs, it's harder to get into the case of multiple different python versions, and you install packages through the R interpreter rather than via pip at the command line

2. I would say R data analysis packages are easier to learn than the python equivalents. Because the dataframe is a native structure in R there has been a lot more packages that have tried alternative syntax approaches to try and find the 'optimal' one. Python has really only had pandas, polars, and pyspark (all of which have implemented their own data structures and therefore have focused more on performance than syntax)

3. This doesn't hold if you're studying a language to be a general purpose programmer. Then python is much better. Anything to avoid the hell of the R standard lib. But if you need to do a bit of coding to analyse data and you've never done any before, my vote would be for R.

However, these are thoughts from my own personal anecdotes rather than any pedagogical theory

sedatk•12mo ago
“C# → Business applications that run on Microsoft systems.”

Folks, it’s 2025. This stereotype should have died at least five years ago. C#+.NET is open source and cross-platform since 2016 or so.

dgrin91•12mo ago
Not to mention c# is commonly used for video games (see: unity)
oaiey•12mo ago
Surely there is somewhere a number, but my educated guess is that 90% of all new / greenfield deployments go into a Linux (or a Lambda/Docker variant).
vaylian•12mo ago
Did C# really catch on on other platforms? C# was somewhat popular on Linux with Gnome for a while but my impression is that this has completely died down.

While it is technically possible to use C# on Linux and MacOS, it doesn't seem to have a significant mind share.

oaiey•12mo ago
For the development of the platform, like desktop apps, no. But as web server, api or just whatever logic layer, definitely. Big times. On Linux in containers or lambdas.
mg•12mo ago

    Python → Scientific computing and machine learning.
    PHP → Web backend.
    
I wouldn't be surprised if more web backend code is written in Python than in PHP these days.

Not sure how to figure it out. Google trends maybe?

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=python%2...

Boltgolt•12mo ago
I think you underestimate the sheer volume of wordpress sites that pay for custom development
kyriakos•12mo ago
Or how many agencies are using laravel for all their customers
pletnes•12mo ago
Typescript and fortran are listed as dynamically typed languages. Doesn’t seem like the author researched too much here.
harrall•12mo ago
IMO ecosystem, tooling and support is what makes a language mainstream. Having a domain is something that comes afterwards.

e.g.

* Ruby had Rails

* PHP had mod_php and a strong Apache-oriented community

* Java had strong support from Sun

* Python for scientific computing because of numpy, etc.

If numpy and friends were made for Ruby instead, I think we’d be in a different world.

geomcentral•12mo ago
Java isn't really used to develop Android apps any more, especially now that Jetpack Compose is here:

Java → Business applications

Kotlin → Android

librasteve•12mo ago
raku -> domain specific languages & grammars
-__---____-ZXyw•12mo ago
I wonder what Common Lisp's 'killer domain' is in this framework... general purpose computations? Which was a bit much to handle for businesses and even a lot of programmers, hence its niche (yet actually very resilient) status?
dawkrish•11mo ago
What is Haskell's killer domain ?