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xqb64 commented on Ask HN: Would you get a CS degree today?    · Posted by u/reilly3000
lexandstuff · 14 days ago
Hey friend,

Happy to answer. Feel free to get in touch on one of the socials in my profile to discuss further.

Q1. I'm from Australia, and the target destination is USA. Although I have no firm plans, I want to have the option in future. Australian's have access to a particular visa called E-3, which I have failed to obtain in the past due to lack of degree.

Q2. Yes. Upon completing this, I will have a BSc in Computer Science from the University of London. It's a bachelor's degree as good as anywhere. The exams are proctored, and all the exams/assignments are graded via Goldsmiths University. It's 100% legit.

Q3. You pay per module, so you don't need to pay up front. You just pick how many modules you want to do that semester and pay for them. The only requirement is that you must complete enough modules per semester to finish within 6 years. Since the education is directly related to my work, it is also tax-deductible in my country.

xqb64 · 13 days ago
Thanks for your answer once again! :)
xqb64 commented on Ask HN: Would you get a CS degree today?    · Posted by u/reilly3000
lexandstuff · 14 days ago
I'm a CS professional of 15 years, getting a CS degree for visa purposes. I'm doing it via the University of London's World Class on Coursera [1], and it costs around ~20-25K USD for the whole thing. If all continues to go well, I'll be done in 3.5 years, all while working full time.

So that's another option to consider: do the CS degree part-time while working on breaking into the industry. You can adjust your workload each semester depending on circumstances, so it's flexible for someone job hunting.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...

xqb64 · 14 days ago
This comment really caught my attention.

I have considered enrolling in a university precisely for the same reason, but I never would have thought that something like that would be considered "valid".

I guess I'm full of questions for you, but in short:

- Where are you coming from and what is your target destination?

- Have you made 101% sure that this way of studying would be acceptable to the employers in your prospective destination country?

- Does one need $20-25K up front, or is there a payment plan?

Thanks if you decide to answer, and I wish you a good luck.

xqb64 commented on Artisanal handcrafted Git repositories   drew.silcock.dev/blog/art... · Posted by u/drewsberry
bradfitz · a month ago
My recent horror from some git work was discovering how git sorts its tree objects.

The docs just say to sort by C locale (byte-order sorting). Easy. Except git was sometimes rejecting my packfiles as being bogus per its fsck code, saying my trees were misordered.

TURNS OUT THERE'S AN UNDOCUMENTED RULE: you need to append an implicit forward slash to directory tree entry names before you sort them.

That forward slash is not encoded in the tree object, nor is the type of the entry. You just put the 20 byte SHA1 hash, which is to either a blob or a hash (or a commit for submodules).

So you can have one directory with directory "testing" and file "testing.md" and it'll sort differently than a directory with two files "testing" and "testing.md".

You can see a repro at https://gist.github.com/bradfitz/4751c58b07b57ff303cbfec3e39...

(So to verify whether a tree object is formatted correctly, you need to have the blobs of all the entries in the tree, at least one level)

xqb64 · a month ago
I've had this exact bug happen to me when I implemented my git clone.

The way I found out was that Github kept rejecting my push, because as I later discovered, my git history was invalid precisely due to entries being sorted improperly due to the forward slash requirement. I could have solved this with the real git, but the point was to use my tool exclusively for version control from inception, so I just deleted the .git folder. So, my git history appears to begin near the end of the whole cycle. But I did manage to learn a lot, both about git and about the language I implemented it in.

xqb64 commented on Artisanal handcrafted Git repositories   drew.silcock.dev/blog/art... · Posted by u/drewsberry
veganjay · a month ago
Neat to see this done by hand! It helps demystify the magic behind git commands.

If you like this, I also recommend "Write Yourself a Git", where you build a minimal git implementation using python: https://wyag.thb.lt/

xqb64 · a month ago
There is also James Coglan's "Building git" book that I just went through and can vouch for its quality.
xqb64 commented on The jank programming language   jank-lang.org/... · Posted by u/akkad33
xqb64 · a month ago
Good luck, jeaye.
xqb64 commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
shlomo_z · 2 months ago
how can I know when it's ready?
xqb64 · 2 months ago
I'll put it up on my github as soon as I implement the push command.
xqb64 commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
xqb64 · 2 months ago
I'm working on a git(1) implementation written in Python. I'm following along the amazing James Coglan's book. Currently 23 chapters in, about to finish off the Part II of the book. Can't wait for the final, third part.

I love books like this one. Some other examples are "Crafting interpreters", "Writing a C compiler", "Building a debugger", and a couple other lower quality ones. The potential in this space for aspiring technical writers is enormous. Let me know if you know some other books that guide you through implementing complex systems software from scratch.

xqb64 commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
bArray · 2 months ago
Interesting project. I'm quite interested in developing a small programming language myself, but am not sure where to start. What resources do you recommend?
xqb64 · 2 months ago
The concepts that the OP talks about (liveness analysis, constant folding, dead code elimination), and similar stuff revolving around IR optimization, can be found explained in great detail in Nora Sandler's "Writing a C compiler".

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