S
Stefan Soc
soc.me · Personal blog · on HN since 2020
Stefan Soc writes about programming language design and software standards, including generics syntax, type annotations, and home directory clutter.
What HN saysCommenters cite his posts on square brackets for generics, defending the home directory from dot-files, and Intel's original 64-bit x86 extensions.
18HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
12stories submitted
228story points
9 months agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Language Design: Use [ ] instead of < > for Generics3 people · 47 points · first shared 2020 · 72 comments on HN
- 2Language Design: Use 'ident: Type' not 'Type ident'2 people · 143 points · first shared 2020 · 188 comments on HN
- 3Intel's original 64bit extensions for x862 people · 14 points · first shared 2025 · 6 comments on HN
- 4Language Design: Stop Using Angle Brackets For Generics2 people · 12 points · first shared 2022 · 18 comments on HN
- 5Defending home2 people · first shared 2025
- 6Language Design: Stop Using Angle-brackets for Generics1 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 7Language Design: Rust’s Struct Initializer Syntax Was a Mistake1 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 8Language Design: Annotations Obsolete Modifiers1 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 9Language Design: Familiarity1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 10x86 prefixes and escape opcodes flowchart1 people · 1 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 11TurnBack.js1 people · first shared 2026
- 12Notes on rust1 people · first shared 2020
What HN people wrote when they linked it
st_goliath · 2026-01-20
If you have JavaScript enabled, that is. JWZ at least does the redirect on the server side.
The following is pulled in from `https://soc.me/assets/js/turnBack.js`:
const undesirables = [
"news.ycombinator.com/",
// "reddit.com/", // disable temporaily
"lobste.rs/"
] ;
if (undesirables.find(site => document.referrer.includes(site))) {
window.location.replace(document.referrer);
}
I wonder why Reddit is "temporarily not undesirable".
jedahan · 2026-01-25
Making home read-only can get there, and I can't find the project that forced using XDG paths. I think it used LD_PRELOAD or somesuch trick.
edit: https://soc.me/standards/defending-home
adrian_b · 2026-01-20
On that page, there is a link to another interesting page on the same site:
https://soc.me/interfaces/intels-original-64bit-extensions-for-x86.htm…
where there are links to a couple of patents filed by Intel in 2000, about a 64-bit extension of the x86 ISA, which had been implemented in Pentium 4, but which had been nonetheless disabled and hidden from the users, in order to not compete with Itanium.
The page explains the content of the patents.
As already mentioned by another poster, at least on Firefox you have to open a tab and then copy this link there, to avoid being identified as an "undesirable" :-)
soni96pl · 2025-08-26
From the same person: https://soc.me/standards/defending-home
I'm aware it mentions Linux specifically, but this is golden:
> From this point on, the number of dot-files and dot-directories can only shrink as the remaining applications get fixed and start conforming to the XDG base directory spec, while no new dot-files and dot-directories can be added to your home directory.
As is original reasoning for not using ~/.config from https://github.com/dirs-dev/directories-rs/issues/62#issuecomment-5867…
> As Apple keeps tightening its after-sale ownership of macOS appliances, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that randomly dumping stuff in $HOME will keep working.
I get the feel he just does not like macOS?
jimbob45 · 2024-03-04
The modern belief is that [] should be reserved for generics[0]. In fairness, I've never seen a language actually stick to that and that's also a bit hollow when Java itself uses <> for generics in the first place.
[0]https://soc.me/languages/stop-using-angle-brackets-for-generics.html
twic · 2020-05-20
In case anyone ever stumbles across this thread, a couple of posts about this:
https://keleshev.com/parsing-ambiguity-type-argument-v-less-than
https://soc.me/languages/stop-using-for-generics
palerdot · 2020-05-01
Language Design Notes on Rust [0] from the same blog looks interesting too ...
[0] - https://soc.me/languages/notes-on-rust.html