Programming Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 24, 2025

• Poul-Henning Kamp ☛ phkmalloc

  Jason Evans laid jemalloc to rest yesterday, and gave a kind shoutout to my malloc, aka. “phkmalloc”, and it occured to me, that I should write that story down.

  I wrote a little bit about it in my article for the 30 year aniversary issue of the FreeBSD Journal but there is more to it than that.

• GNU ☛ Call for non-Linux testers

  While I am able to test the new code on a variety of Linux systems, I would need some help for the other operating systems. So if you run dmidecode on any of the following operating systems and would be willing and able to test-build the new code and provide feedback, that would be appreciated:

  * FreeBSD
  * NetBSD
  * OpenBSD
  * Solaris/OpenSolaris/Illumos

• Seth Godin ☛ Big scale, big impact

  Instead of seeking to fail your way to enough, it makes more sense to commit your way to better.

• Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Proving that every program halts

  One of the best known hard problems in computer science is the halting problem. In fact, it's widely thought[1] that you cannot write a program that will, for any arbitrary program as input, tell you correctly whether or not it will terminate. This is written from the framing of computers, though: can we do better with a human in the loop?

  It turns out, we can. And we can use a method that's generalizable, which many people can follow for many problems. Not everyone can use the method, which you'll see why in a bit. But lots of people can apply this proof technique. Let's get started.

• Michael Lynch ☛ My First Impressions of Gleam

  I’m looking for a new programming language to learn this year, and Gleam looks like the most fun. It’s an Elixir-like language that supports static typing.

  I read the language tour, and it made sense to me, but I need to build something before I can judge a programming language well.

  I’m sharing some notes on my first few hours using Gleam in case they’re helpful to others learning Gleam or to the team developing the language.

• Philip Zucker ☛ Telescopes Are Tries: A Dependent Type Shellac on SQLite

  A telescope is a sequence of variables and their type such that later types in the sequence can depend on the earlier variables.

• Rlang ☛ Understanding the Link Between Uncertainty and Imports by glmnet

  According to the graph below, suggested by Fernando Leibovici, the increase in uncertainty that began in late 2024 aligns with a rise in imports, indicating that US importers accelerated their purchases as a precaution against expected tariff increases or supply chain disruptions.

• Perl / Raku

  • Rakulang ☛ 2025.25 To Found Or Not

    Elizabeth Mattijsen makes the case to start a (global) Raku Foundation in Europe in Towards a Raku Foundation, with an associated problem solving issue. If you have any thoughts on this, be sure to make them known in the issue, or send an email to foundation@raku.org. Thank you!

• Python

  • The New Stack ☛ Speed Up Python Loops: Proven Techniques To Make Your Code Faster

    Introduction Loops are an integral part of the Python programming language.

• Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

  • Network World ☛ Master Linux Math with the bc Command | Easy CLI Calculations Explained!

    Learn how to use the powerful bc command in Linux to perform fast, accurate calculations right from the command line. In this Linux tip, Sandra Henry-Stocker—author of the Unix as a Second Language blog—walks you through examples including addition, exponents, decimals, and setting scale for precision. Whether you're scripting or solving quick math problems, bc is a must-know tool for Linux users.

• Golang

  • Francesco Mazzoli ☛ How to store Go pointers from assembly

    The standard Go toolchain comes with an assembler out of the box. Said assembler is highly idiosyncratic, using syntax inherited from Plan 9 and choosing its own names for platform-specific instructions and registers. But it’s great to have it readily available.

    More mundanely, Go comes with a garbage collector. This post explains how to make these two components play nice, if we want to manipulate Go pointers from our assembly.

  • Anton Zhiyanov ☛ JSON evolution in Go: from v1 to v2

    The second version of the json package coming in Go 1.25 is a big update, and it has a lot of breaking changes. The v2 package adds new features, fixes API issues and behavioral flaws, and boosts performance. Let's take a look at what's changed!