Bitfield Consulting
bitfieldconsulting.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2010
John Arundel's Bitfield Consulting blog covers Go, Rust, CUE configuration, scripting, and clean code practices.
What HN saysHN commenters link it for the Go versus Rust comparison, call its CUE article the best introduction they found, and cite it in clean code discussions.
54HN people shared it
12linked it in comments
325stories submitted
3.2Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Cue Is an exciting Configuration Language7 people · 13 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 2Rust vs. Go6 people · 31 points · first shared 2024 · 3 comments on HN
- 3Scripting with Go5 people · 246 points · first shared 2022 · 66 comments on HN
- 4How to know when it's time to go4 people · 92 points · first shared 2025 · 61 comments on HN
- 5Programming in Go Is Fun4 people · 18 points · first shared 2024 · 4 comments on HN
- 6The Tao of Go4 people · 14 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 7Don't write clean code, write CRISP code4 people · 12 points · first shared 2022 · 7 comments on HN
- 8Cue Is a Configuration Language4 people · 7 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 9A career ending mistake3 people · 760 points · first shared 2022 · 312 comments on HN
- 10Rust vs. Go3 people · 44 points · first shared 2020 · 39 comments on HN
- 11Puppet versus Chef: Why Puppet wins3 people · 26 points · first shared 2010 · 12 comments on HN
- 12Iterators in Go3 people · 19 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 13Rust and Go vs. Everything Else?3 people · 17 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 14Seven Rust books that don't suck3 people · 15 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 15My Horrible Career3 people · 13 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
claytongulick · 2023-09-07
I love nodejs, it's my go-to language for server side stuff.
Even with that bias though, I have to admit that it's awful for typical command line script stuff.
Dealing with async and streams and stuff for parsing csv files is miserable (I just wrote some stuff to parse and process hundreds of gigs of files in node, and it wasn't fun).
Python is the right tool for that job IMHO.
Also, weirdly, maybe golang? I just came across this [1] and it has one of my eyebrows cocked.
[1] https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/scripting
bitfield · 2022-08-27
"First, it's really important to say that both Go and Rust are absolutely excellent programming languages. They're modern, powerful, widely-adopted, and offer excellent performance. You may have read articles and blog posts aiming to convince you that Go is better than Rust, or vice versa. But that really makes no sense; every programming language represents a set of trade-offs. Each language is optimised for different things, so your choice of language should be determined by what suits you and the problems you want to solve with it.
In this article, I'll try to give a brief overview of where I think Go is the ideal choice, and where I think Rust is a better alternative. I'll also try to give a flavour of the essential nature of both languages (the Tao of Go and Rust, if you like)."
https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/rust-vs-go
ojintoad · 2022-01-28
Since others are reflecting on the merits of the article in ways I agree with, here's some articles I've collected from recent discussions on "clean code". Some even try to ditch the term or argue against it, others give context to the meaning. Would love to see others if anyone has any!
https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/crisp-code
https://overreacted.io/goodbye-clean-code/
https://www.cyclic.sh/posts/write-shitty-code
https://qntm.org/clean
typical182 · 2021-10-19
FWIW, the best intro to CUE I’ve found so far is:
https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/cuelang-exciting
…which does a nice job of starting from the problem, and building up from "how could we improve JSON for use as a config language" to arriving at CUE.
(Those types of explanations happen to resonate with me, including understanding the "why" first at least for me helps the mechanics and details later make more sense and feel more intuitive…)
sciurus · 2012-05-17
Here's a dump of blogs I follow that have lots of devops-oriented contents.
http://www.kartar.net/
http://www.kitchensoap.com/
http://www.masterzen.fr/
http://blog.nistu.de/
http://www.jedi.be/blog/
http://www.krisbuytaert.be/blog/
http://www.unixdaemon.net/
http://www.rottenbytes.info/
http://blog.lusis.org/
http://bitfieldconsulting.com/
http://agilesysadmin.net/
mu0n · 2025-01-01
I first read this quote in the book 'Monk Mode': https://bitfieldconsulting.com/books/monk-mode
It's in the context of learning crafts, and the main point is that many people are discouraged because they don't seem to get quick results from their practice—but nor does anyone else! When you have a good sense of how much time is required to get good at something, your expectations will be more in line with reality.
gus_leonel · 2024-10-18
Test names should be sentences: https://bitfieldconsulting.com/posts/test-names
teleforce · 2024-02-01
Perhaps relevant to the discussions is this friendly book on crypto systems implementation in the latest version of Go by John Arundel. Inside the last section there is a passing mention on post quantum crypto. Perhaps if John can update the book later with this library once the NIST PQ is standardized.
Explore Go: Cryptography (Go 1.22 edition):
https://bitfieldconsulting.com/books/crypto
verdverm · 2023-05-05
Does this explanation help: https://cuetorials.com/introduction/
Also, this: https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/cuelang-exciting
raxxorrax · 2021-11-08
From here which was linked in the article:
https://bitfieldconsulting.com/golang/generics
Why [T comparable] and not [T constraints.Comparable]?
One is inbuilt, the other is just an interface defined in a package? Compiler would check if the types all implement the required operators in both cases, no?
I am no Go programmer and don't know the language specification, just asking out of curiosity.
keithlard · 2011-10-09
A little while ago I wrote a piece comparing Puppet vs Chef on 10 different criteria and concluded that Puppet wins on all of them: http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef
It stimulated a very interesting discussion in comments in which some of the leading lights from both communities (and there is some overlap) took part.
joevandyk · 2010-03-28
Be sure to read the response from the lead dev of Chef here: http://bitfieldconsulting.com/puppet-vs-chef#comment-19