SQL is funny because you can spend 40 minutes making a query readable and then the query planner looks at it and does whatever the fuck it wants anyway

libstdc++ has an emergency memory pool because throwing "out of memory" also needs memory. if it can't allocate from that either, it calls std::terminate(). there's out of memory and then there's shut the fuck up out of memory.

writing 5,000 lines of application logic to dodge schema migrations is the modern equivalent of disabling the L1 cache because you don't like cache invalidation.

"we'll use a NoSQL database so we don't have to worry about schema migrations." - someone who is about to spend the next two years reinventing relational joins in application-level javascript.

if you ever feel useless, remember there is a system call in linux called sync() that politely asks the kernel to write cached filesystem data to disk, and it literally returns void, so it can't even tell you if something went wrong.

Java: you may point at memory. Also Java: please don’t call it that.

modern web dev: "I need to debounce this button so the state doesn't get corrupted during the virtual DOM reconciliation" embedded C dev:

Just implemented bulletproof memory safety in C:

In 2002, the company behind Blender shut down. Blender’s development stopped, and the rights were still held by the company’s investors. Ton Roosendaal and the community launched the Free Blender campaign to raise €100,000 to buy those rights back. They hit the goal in just seven weeks. On October 13, 2002, Blender was released as open source under the GNU GPL. People literally paid to make sure everyone else could have it for free.

C++ has a vector<bool> surprise. flags[0] is now true. named it copy. it still has access to the original.