Programming Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 19, 2026

• Xe's Blog ☛ I hate compilers

  You'd think that given the same bytes of input you'd get the same bytes of output. lol. lmao. No, you don't. It's complicated.

• Qt ☛ Qt Creator 20 released

  Release 20 of the Qt Creator IDE adds support for working with Hey Hi (AI) coding agents, a Zen Mode that puts your code editor into the focus, support for the GN (Generate Ninja) build system, and many more improvements.

• Modus Create LLC ☛ Sheaves in Haskell

  I recently found a way to represent sheaves in Haskell. It was a fun couple of weeks of head-scratching. But as much as I wanted it to, the code in my demonstration repo doesn’t speak for itself. So I’m writing this blog post to share my newfound understanding. In this post I’ll be assuming a pretty solid knowledge of category theory (but not of sheaves, which I’ll be explaining). If you aren’t, wait until my next post which will give a more practical introduction to sheaves.

• Peter Mbanugo ☛ Why Odin?

  Odin offers the native performance of C with syntax that reads closer to Go. Its memory model does not give you a headache. Its type system is pristine, although you will encounter the occasional oddity — one that makes sense once you understand the rationale and the trade-off.

• Vikash Patel ☛ So, We Are Writing Efficient Software Again

  RAM is up 400%. CPUs cost 15% more. The free hardware lunch is finally over. Welcome back to the 80s, where every byte counts.

• Security Week ☛ No Exploits Required

  But you’d be wrong! While I believe that CVEs are an important, even foundational, component of any modern security program (and I will explore aspects of individual CVEs and the program in the future), I’m not convinced that we should be totally infatuated with exploits and bugs. After four decades of personally responding to (and occasionally causing) cybersecurity incidents, it’s become clear to me that most people run into trouble not because they forgot to patch some critical internal database, but because the networking deck is stacked against the defenders.

• Eli Billauer ☛ The pitfalls with unsigned integers in C

  These are my notes as I tried to figure out if it’s OK to assume that a multiplication of two signed integers results in something repeatable. Or more specifically, if I multiply two radix-2 strictly positive integers that are defined as “int” in C, is it enough to check that the result is strictly positive in order to ensure that the result hasn’t wrapped? Is this a portable solution?

  I’ll give my answer right away: It’s a definite maybe. And since I’m sure that these integers are strictly positive, the simple way out is to change their definition to unsigned int, and call it a day. Which is what I eventually did.

  The rest of this post consists of pieces of information I randomly gathered as I went along. I was never a big fan of unsigned integers of any sort, and this reminded me why.

• CCC ☛ Computer says no. Troubles with fixing algorithmic decision-making. - media.ccc.de

  Algorithmic predictions are used to allocate social goods such as healthcare, job training, and education. Despite efforts to apply fairness frameworks and participatory approaches, practical outcomes remain problematic as recent investigations have shown. This talk examines standard approaches to ‘fair machine learning’ through three cases: (1) health programs, (2) long-term unemployment, and (3) school dropout. It critically assesses their limitations and normative assumptions. Two key distinctions clarify the debates: fairness-focused versus welfare-focused methods on the one hand, and whether predictions are instrumentally or communicatively rational on the other. The latter distinction stresses whether algorithms serve effective implementation or facilitate collective evaluation of policy goals.