frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

The Scalar Select Anti-Pattern

https://matklad.github.io/2025/05/14/scalar-select-aniti-pattern.html
47•goranmoomin•1y ago

Comments

castratikron•1y ago
As long as processing one event does not affect any of the other events in the batch. E.g. events are file IO, and processing one event causes another event's descriptor to get closed before that event can be processed.
wahern•1y ago
If the close routine on an event source, or the low-level (e.g. epoll) registration, deregistration, and dequeueing logic doesn't know how to keep polling and liveness state consistent between userspace and the kernel, they've got much bigger problems. This looks like Rust code so I would hope the event stream libraries are, e.g., keeping Rc'd file objects and properly managing reference integrity viz-a-viz kernel state before the application caller ever sees the first dequeued event in a cycle. This is a perennial issue with event loop libraries and buggy application code (in every language). One can't just deal with raw file descriptors, call the close syscall directly, etc, hoping to keep state consistent implicitly. There's an unavoidable tie-in needed between application's wrappers around low-level resources and the event loop in use.
taeric•1y ago
I'm not entirely clear on what the proposal is at the end? Seems that the long term answer as to "which of these implications to pursue" is "all of them?" Simply taking in a batch of instructions doesn't immediately change much? You still have to be able to do each of the other things. And you will still expect some dependencies between batches that could possibly interact in the same ways.

In a sense, this is no different than how your processor is dealing with instructions coming in. You will have some instructions that can be run without waiting on previous ones. You will have some that can complete quickly. You will have some that are stalled on other parts of the system. (I'm sure I could keep wording an instruction to match each of the implications.)

To that end, part of your program has to deal with taking off "whats next" and finding how to prepare that to pass to the execution portion of your program. You can make that only take in batches, but you are almost certainly responsible for how you chunk them moreso than whatever process is sending the instructions to you? Even if you are handed clear batches, it is incumbent on you to batch them as they go off to the rest of the system.

lmz•1y ago
I guess the proposal is "instead of fetching and acting on one event at a time, consider fetching all available events and look for opportunities to optimize which ones you process (e.g. by prioritization or by skipping certain events if superseded by newer ones)".
taeric•1y ago
I mean, I got that. But you could as easily say "instead of fetching and acting on one event at a time, fetch and triage/route instructions into applicable queues."

In particular, there is no guarantee that moving to batches changes any of the problems you may have from acting on a single one at a time. To that end, you will have to look into all of the other strategies sooner or later.

Following from that, the problem is not "processMessage" or whatever. The problem is that you haven't broken "processMessage" up into the constituent "receive/triage/process/resolve" loop that you almost certainly will have to end up with.

malkia•1y ago
in CPU's - pipelining!
jchw•1y ago
I believe something similar is going on internally in Windows with event queues. It coalesces and prioritizes input events when multiple of them pile up before you're able to pop new events off of the queue. (For some events, e.g. pointer events, you can even go and query frames that were coalesced during input handling.) On the application/API end, it just looks like a "scalar select" loop, but actually it is doing batching behavior for input events!

(On the flip side, if you have a Wayland client that falls behind on processing its event queue, it can crash. On the whole this isn't really that bad but if you have something sending a shit load of events it can cause very bad behavior. This has made me wonder if it's possible, with UNIX domain sockets, to implement some kind of event coalescing on the server-side, to avoid flooding the client with high-precision pointer movement events while it's falling behind. Maybe start coalescing when FIONREAD gets to some high watermark? No idea...)

Tailwind Labs is joining Shopify

https://tailwindcss.com/blog/tailwind-is-joining-shopify
87•EdwinHoksberg•27m ago•31 comments

Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/flock-wants-a-closely-surveilled-world-with-no-...
373•pseudolus•3h ago•294 comments

Desert Ant Labs: local, fast models that run on device

https://desertant.com/blog/introducing-desert-ant-labs/
122•willwhitedc•2h ago•29 comments

I advertise malicious software on Google Ads

https://xlii.space/eng/malicious-software-on-google-ads/
146•xlii•2h ago•69 comments

Claude, change the "Add to Cart" button to blue

https://opusfived.dev/
185•matthieu_bl•4h ago•59 comments

DeepSeek launching v4.1 flash cheaper and more capable than v4 pro

166•nickweb•2h ago•53 comments

Muse – Meta’s personal AI agent

https://ai.meta.com/muse/
565•yks•18h ago•621 comments

Coyote v. Acme (1990)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1990/02/26/coyote-v-acme
71•ChrisArchitect•3d ago•26 comments

Playing whack-a-mole is losing

https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/whack-a-mole-is-losing/
3•surprisetalk•12m ago•0 comments

Roame (YC S23) Is Hiring Viral Content Editor

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/roame/jobs/KuVVqSh-content-systems-builder-editor
1•zman0225•1h ago

Do people prefer stories written by AI?

https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/do-people-prefer-stories-wri...
3•pykello•16m ago•1 comments

Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf
1831•procedurecall•1d ago•755 comments

Smolts: A pedagogical IDE for a teaching language

https://eighty-twenty.org/2026/09/04/smolts
14•tonyg•5d ago•0 comments

Building a Wall Lamp from Scratch

https://mbugert.de/posts/2026-09-09-bedroom-lamp-build/
31•jcklie•3h ago•9 comments

Open-source 3D anatomy explorer: 2,234 selectable BodyParts3D meshes

https://github.com/ashemag/human-atlas
28•metrofun•1d ago•11 comments

Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch

https://buttondown.com/blog/lotus-notes-email
89•maguay•3h ago•55 comments

Ask HN: Anyone still coding like 2021? Where do you work?

9•sph•12m ago•1 comments

How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-ai-math-breakthrough-ignited-controversy
156•pseudolus•3h ago•149 comments

Tension wood: A 'muscle' that can both bend and straighten plants

https://phys.org/news/2026-09-trees-muscle-posture-newly-role.html
142•mdp2021•6d ago•35 comments

How to build a printer

https://nishantjosh.dev/blogs/how-to-build-a-fking-printer/
400•cat-whisperer•16h ago•86 comments

AlphaGenome Atlas: a high-resolution map of human DNA

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-deepmind/alphagenome-atlas/
580•utiiiD•22h ago•124 comments

How GPT‑5.6 Sol helps run quantum computing experiments

https://openai.com/index/codex-quantum-computing-experiments/
106•theanonymousone•6h ago•82 comments

Researchers Spot Fake Ancient Pottery Using the Earth's Magnetic Field

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-determine-how-to-spot-fake-ancient-pottery-...
64•cisc•3d ago•27 comments

A Biography of Lee Holloway, the Architect of Cloudflare's Technology (Part 1)

https://note.com/masakazu_urabe/n/n7815f5b64fab?hl=en
79•porridgeraisin•9h ago•19 comments

One woman's Tesla was remotely controlled by an abusive ex-partner

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/09/how-one-womans-tesla-was-remotely-controll...
12•gradschool•37m ago•2 comments

Mercury 2.5

https://www.inceptionlabs.ai/blog/introducing-mercury-2-5
227•Topfi•17h ago•44 comments

DaVinci Resolve 21.1

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20260908-03
422•tosh•1d ago•188 comments

Large language models develop novel social biases through adaptive exploration

https://openreview.net/challenge?redirect=%2Fforum%3Fid%3Dpc7fqaOcAH
184•paimapi•16h ago•96 comments

I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer

https://github.com/ayghri/i-have-adhd
492•domhudson•23h ago•336 comments

“Tweet” and the bird logo apparently enter the public domain

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2026/09/tweet-and-the-bird-logo-apparently-enter-the-public...
156•progval•7h ago•91 comments