Nullspace
blog.nullspace.io · Personal blog · on HN since 2013
Nullspace is a programming blog by Alex Clemmer covering Windows, OCaml, Python, Lisp on the Apple //e and search engines.
What HN saysHN links it for posts on the Windows command line, building a search engine to compete with Google, and recovering deleted files with grep.
27HN people shared it
10linked it in comments
30stories submitted
1.4Kstory points
2 years agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How bad is the Windows command line really?6 people · 157 points · first shared 2016 · 104 comments on HN
- 2What "viable search engine competition" really looks like6 people · 126 points · first shared 2014 · 99 comments on HN
- 3Turning the Apple //e into a lisp machine, part 14 people · 173 points · first shared 2013 · 62 comments on HN
- 4The obvious Python parser3 people · 21 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 5Beginner's guide to OCaml beginner's guides2 people · 209 points · first shared 2014 · 70 comments on HN
- 6Recovering deleted files using only grep2 people · 142 points · first shared 2014 · 45 comments on HN
- 7MSFT open sources production serialization system written partially in Haskell2 people · 10 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 8Half of IBM's profits come from mainframes2 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 9Twitter's IPO in simple terms2 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 10How does Akamai's "secure heap" patch to OpenSSL work?2 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 11I found a bug in the .NET framework and fixed it by hand-altering the DLL1 people · 332 points · first shared 2014 · 118 comments on HN
- 1284% of a single-threaded 1KB write in Redis is spent in the kernel1 people · 158 points · first shared 2015 · 48 comments on HN
- 13Should I Machine-Learn? (2014)1 people · 30 points · first shared 2019 · 11 comments on HN
- 14FoundationDB proves the datastore is the worst place in your stack to take risks1 people · 7 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Porting Mesos to Windows1 people · 5 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
chasil · 2022-06-22
The classic Windows shell has many flaws in its design, appears to have come from OS/2, and it's amazing that it works at all for how it has been used:
https://blog.nullspace.io/batch.html
Powershell is a new arrival, limited outside of Windows. I admit that I don't know it.
The POSIX shell also has severe problems with ambiguity, and it is not an LR-parsed language:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/code_parsing_posix_s_he…
Use the right tool for the job, imperfect as they may be.
It is unfortunate that awk didn't grow and supplant the shell, as for many years the BWK "One True Awk" did use straightforward lex and yacc grammars.
alpb · 2019-06-05
Worth reading: http://blog.nullspace.io/building-search-engines.html
a0 · 2014-07-27
(Author of the repo here).
This is just a draft. I wasn't expecting this to be published here in its initial state.
Actually my intention was just to create an exhaustive collection of references to useful resources for the OCaml programming language. The list is far from complete and needs more refinements both in terms of content, organization and design.
So all of your critics are fair (and actually useful). I'll continue to improve it, and I promise you'll be surprised the next time you visit the page! ;)
Btw, if you want to quickly understand how the ecosystem of the language works and actually start experimenting with it, here's an excellent guide for beginners:
- <http://blog.nullspace.io/beginners-guide-to-ocaml-beginners-guides.htm…
Hope it helps, and if you have any suggestions I'd be glad to know about them.
jldugger · 2021-08-24
If you follow the citation trail:
0. Dan writes an article about marginal employment decisions, which cites
1. Alex Clemmer wrote (http://blog.nullspace.io/building-search-engines.html) about building a search engine to compete with Google, who cites
2. John Peebles, who wrote (https://peebs.org/2014/01/04/we-need-viable-search-engine-competition-… about the urgent need for a viable competitor to Google, saying:
> I wonder if we haven’t all been hypnotised by the complexity, much of which is marketing hype, and have missed the enormous opportunity that exists right in front of our noses. Does the next search engine have to be as big, involved in as many things, employ as many people, and fight on the same footing to be accomplish the goal of providing a counterpoint to Google?
This article was upvoted fairly well on on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7011472), though the top comments are all in agreement this is not a simple task. This zeitgeist, along with Dan's personal experience on the subject, is why he wrote the article using Google as the example.
fferen · 2022-09-18
As a last resort, if you remember part of the lost file, you can grep the hard drive: http://blog.nullspace.io/recovering-deleted-files-using-only-grep.html
Saved some of my code once.
aus_ · 2015-08-05
In 2012, The Economist reported that mainframes accounted for about a quarter of IBM's revenue and about half of its profits. [0] [1]
IT budgets for large banks and financial firms usually dedicate something like 20% their budget to mainframes, but it usually accounts for about 80% of the firm's workload/processing.
[0]: http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/09/ibms-mainframes
[1]: http://blog.nullspace.io/mainframes.html
gregwebs · 2015-01-10
The Bond compiler is written in Haskell: http://blog.nullspace.io/bond-oss.html
It is about time considering that Microsoft research has been one of the main funders of work on the Haskell compiler.
kyllo · 2014-08-01
Off topic, but I really enjoyed your post about writing a Python lexer/parser in Haskell. Thanks for that!
http://blog.nullspace.io/obvious-python-parser.html
lobster_johnson · 2014-04-13
Here's a good blog article which looks at their patch: http://blog.nullspace.io/akamai-ssl-patch.html.
antics · 2014-02-26
A couple months ago, I decided to write a very short tutorial/introduction to the program `telnet`. I ended up deciding to use the <blink> tag to make a cursor that blinks similar to how it blinks in the terminal.
Hilariously, I discovered that <blink> is actually no longer implemented in Chrome.
The one legitimate use!
I ended up mocking it with JavaScript. EDIT: it's here if you want to see how the cursor turned out! http://blog.nullspace.io/day-208.html