J
Juha Nieminen
warp.povusers.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2010
Juha Nieminen writes opinionated programming pages on C++, templates, sorting algorithms and floating point, including a "what grinds my gears" section.
What HN saysHN links it for the bubble sort misconceptions page and the export templates essay, with commenters debating whether insertion sort is the better simple choice.
22HN people shared it
11linked it in comments
13stories submitted
173story points
12 months agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1A response to Linus Torvalds on C++ (2007)7 people · 30 points · first shared 2010 · 19 comments on HN
- 2Why export templates would be useful in C++ (2010)3 people · 22 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 3Bubble Sort Misconceptions3 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 4Airfoilmyth2 people · first shared 2013
- 5Why C++ is vastly superior to C1 people · 48 points · first shared 2011 · 119 comments on HN
- 63-character filename extensions1 people · 43 points · first shared 2014 · 50 comments on HN
- 7Why I hate Java1 people · 21 points · first shared 2017 · 50 comments on HN
- 8Floating Point Caveats1 people · 3 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 9Java considered harmful (for programming C++)1 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 10An Efficient LZW Implementation1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 11Terminator timelines theory1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 12Grrr1 people · first shared 2017
- 13HateC1 people · first shared 2010
- 14Bubblesort eng1 people · first shared 2011
- 15Cplusplus vs c1 people · first shared 2010
What HN people wrote when they linked it
senkora · 2025-02-05
The best way that I know of to do this is the """ "Manual" export templates """ idea discussed here: http://warp.povusers.org/programming/export_templates.html
(It's a great post in general. N.B. that it's also quite old and export templates have been removed from the standard for quite some time after compiler writers refused to implement them.)
TL;DR: Declare your templates in a header, implement them in a source file, and explicitly instantiate them inside that same source file for every type that you want to be able to use them with. You lose expressiveness but gain compilation speed because the template is guaranteed to be compiled exactly once for each instantiation.
Jach · 2017-11-15
You're misidentifying the attitude. The problem is that Bubble Sort is a terrible algorithm, there's no reason not to use Insertion Sort or better instead except for some reason CS programs still inflict BS on students so that's what they remember when they just need to sort something.
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/bubblesort_eng.html
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/bubblesort_misconceptions.html (Bubble sort is not great when your data is almost sorted. Insertion sort is, though.)
westoncb · 2017-07-06
Probably worth jumping up a level in the URL to: http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/ —and noting that this comes from the guy's "What grinds my gears" page, which also links to a "Why I hate C" article.
fhars · 2011-08-15
Another stack based language worth learning might be Postscript (even if only to make your coworkers wonder why such a small file takes such a long time to print: http://warp.povusers.org/MandScripts/ps.html or http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/foster/postscript.html )
jbandela1 · 2023-12-06
For an N^2 sorting algorithm, I think insertion sort is superior to bubble sort when you want something simple:
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/bubblesort_misconceptions.html
humbledrone · 2020-04-26
Paper airplanes fly, and they have flat wings!
It turns out that flat wings work just fine, but the airfoil shape we see on airplanes is more efficient:
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/airfoilmyth.html
nayuki · 2017-07-06
The index page has dates for other articles, but not this one. http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/index.html
Archive.org's first snapshot of this page is on 2006-02-08.
The HTTP response headers contain the entry: "Last-Modified: Sun, 14 Oct 2012 08:58:12 GMT"
emeraldd · 2013-04-30
Something really bugs me about this. Unless I'm mistaken, Bernoulli's principle doesn't say anything about throwing air down ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoullis_principle#Applications
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/airfoilmyth.html
What am I missing here?
truncate · 2012-02-28
I found a response to this http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseToTorvalds.html
tree_of_item · 2011-05-14
The author of the OP has a pretty well written rebuttal to everything Torvalds has said about C++:
http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseToTorvalds.html
Jun8 · 2011-04-05
Linus Torvalds' popular comment is dissected here (http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseToTorvalds.html):
"C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C."
You know the clip I'd like to see: Linus vs Stroustrup, discussing the pros and cons of C++. The hotheaded hacker against the calm language developer. Who'd win?