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jesse__ commented on Without the futex, it's futile   h4x0r.org/futex/... · Posted by u/eatonphil
ori_b · 7 days ago
If you overspecify, you close the door to better implementations. This is why, for example, C++ standard hash tables and regexes are an order of magnitude slower than third party ones.

The standard didn't say "you must implement std::unordered_map as a hash table with chained buckets and extra memory allocations", but ithe standard specified several guarantees that make it very difficult to implement hash tables with open addressing.

Every constraint that you specify potentially locks out a better implementation.

For recursive rwlocks, there's a lot of ways to implement them. Do you want to lock out high performance implementations that do less error checking, for example?

jesse__ · 7 days ago
This is exactly the issue, and unordered_map exemplifies it perfectly.

On paper, unordered_map sounds great. It lists all the admirable properties you would theoretically want in a hashtable. Then in practice when you go to implement it, you realize that you've painted yourself into a garbage fire, as the saying goes.

I suppose this is a failing of the design by committee method, where the committee isn't directly responsible for implementation either before or during standard writing.

jesse__ commented on Apple's new Processor Trace instrument is incredible   victorwynne.com/processor... · Posted by u/xdevweeknds
Veserv · 9 days ago
This is just standard instruction trace.

Intel has supported such capability via Intel Processor Trace (PT) since at least 2014 [1]. Here is a full trace recorder built by Jane Street feeding into standard program trace visualizers [2].

ARM has supported such capability via the standard CoreSight Program Trace Macrocell (PTM)[3]/Embedded Trace Macrocell (ETM)[4] since at least 2000.

If you pair it with standard data trace, which is less commonly available, then you have the prerequisites for a hardware trace time travel debugger as originally seen in the early 2000s [5]

You can get similar performance/function tracing entirely in software via software-instrumented instruction trace and similar debugging information (though less granular performance information) via record-replay time travel debugger recordings.

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...

[2] https://blog.janestreet.com/magic-trace/

[3] https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ihi0035/b/Program-Fl...

[4] https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0158/d

[5] https://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1564

jesse__ · 9 days ago
10/10 comment

Deleted Comment

jesse__ commented on Going faster than memcpy   squadrick.dev/journal/goi... · Posted by u/snihalani
jesse__ · 15 days ago
Would have loved to see performance comparisons along the way, instead of just the small squashed graph at the end. Nice article otherwise :)
jesse__ commented on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2025)    · Posted by u/whoishiring
jesse__ · 25 days ago
Location: BC Canada Remote only : 10 years remote, 12 years experience

Technologies : C, C++, SIMD, OpenGL, WebGL, WASM, JS, TS

Interests : compilers, language runtimes, 2D & 3D graphics, performance

--------

Hello, my name is Jesse.

I'd describe myself as a competent generalist and a lifelong learner. I'm frequently working on something I've never done before.

My most recent professional experience has been about a year at a semiconductor startup where I wrote prototypes for a compiler and a cycle simulator.

One of my personal projects of ~10 years is a 3D game engine. Working on it has taught me a great deal about systems and graphics programming. It runs on Windows, Linux and Web (WASM/WebGL). I chose to build it without any libraries (barring the CRT for startup), which began as a learning exercise, but has taught me the value of simplicity.

I've also been working on a metaprogramming system for C & CPP. Think templates/constexpr, but significantly more ergonomic. It turns out I have a small passion for compilers. It currently generates many tens of thousands of lines of code for my game engine project including containers and an interactive realtime data visualization/editor.

On the optimization side of things, I recently wrote the world's fastest open-source AVX2 Perlin noise implementation, and wrote about the process on my blog. I beat the state-of-the-art by ~1.8x, which took me about two weeks.

That's the cliff-notes on my technical background. As a person I'm friendly and easy to get along with. I like the phrase "have strong opinions, weakly held". Outside of work I enjoy surfing, backcountry skiing, snowmobiling, rock-climbing and beer!

Cheers, Jesse

https://scallywag.software

https://scallywag.software/resume.html

https://github.com/scallyw4g

jesse@scallywag.software

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jesse__ commented on Writing memory efficient C structs   tomscheers.github.io/2025... · Posted by u/aragonite
jesse__ · a month ago
Minor nitpick, 32bit max value is ~4 billion, not 4 million
jesse__ commented on How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy   blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025... · Posted by u/OuterVale
jesse__ · a month ago
> Always, Always Require a Compilation Step [...] as opposed to, say, writing code as it will be run

I have a hard time believing that writing vanilla JS is superior to using a compiled language in any but very simple cases. Seems like bad advice to me.

jesse__ commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
MITSardine · a month ago
Hey, I had a quick look at your engine's github page, what are you looking to do with surface meshing exactly?
jesse__ · a month ago
Nothing specifically for the moment. I've toyed with the idea of having an option for smooth terrain, but it's not important for the game I'm currently making.
jesse__ commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
jesse__ · a month ago
I've been working on a 3D voxel-based game engine for like 10 years in my spare time. The most recent big job has been to port the world gen and editor to the GPU, which has had some pretty cute knock-on effects. The most interesting is you can hot-reload the world gen shaders and out pop your changes on the screen, like a voxel version of shadertoy.

https://github.com/scallyw4g/bonsai

I also wrote a metaprogramming language which generates a lot of the editor UI for the engine. It's a bespoke C parser that supports a small subset of C++, which is exposed to the user through a 'scripting-like' language you embed directly in your source files. I wrote it as a replacement for C++ templates and in my completely unbiased opinion it is WAY better.

https://github.com/scallyw4g/poof

u/jesse__

KarmaCake day589April 4, 2022
About
jesse@scallywag.software

Website: https://scallywag.software

Bonsai :: A 3D Voxel engine, in a pot: https://github.com/scallyw4g/bonsai

Poof :: A C Metaprogramming Environment: https://github.com/scallyw4g/poof

Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/scallywag_software

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