Linux: What can you epoll?
On Linux what can you turn into a file descriptor and then monitor with epoll?
This is the personal blog of Graham King. I write mostly about software engineering, and occasionally about society. I am also on Mastodon, Twitter and Github.
All posts by date
2022
Underrust: Multiple Return Values
How does Rust return values, and does it make any difference to us programmers?
Overthinking Leetcode's Two Sum with SIMD
When is the linear scan Two Sum solution faster than a map? What if we use AVX-512 instructions?
Underrust: What is the cost of sync::Once?
In Rust, what is the performance cost of using sync::Once after the initial setup?
Underrust: Does it matter what type (u8, u32, ...) I use?
In Rust, how does using a different primitive type (u8, i32, u64, …) change the generated assembly?
The Underrust: Rust's assembly output
Assembly: In all the world of the programmer, there is no more important output.
A very small Rust binary indeed
Can we make a Rust program that’s as small as it’s assembler equivalent?
A random number you already have: The stack address
Thanks to Address Space Layout Randomization you can use the address of a stack variable as a zero-cost random number.
Return Value Optimization in Rust
Rust avoids memory copies by optimizing return value placement.
Rust atomics on x86: How and why
On x86 it doesn’t really matter what sync::atomic::Ordering you choose.
Rust is also C
Safety is boring, let’s do pointer arithmetic.
epoll: The API that powers the modern internet
Linux’s epoll API solved the C10K problem, enabling fast and afforable Internet services.
2021
Scripting Minecraft server with Python
Minecraft has an API. If you run your own server you can program it from Python.
Rust Performance 101 in 5 Minutes
Is your Rust program CPU bound? Here are the very first things you can do on Linux.
CPU silently disappointed with your choice of instruction ordering
An adventure in CPU out-of-order instruction execution.
Traits: Rust's unifying concept
Rust’s traits are a single concept that unifies interfaces, abstract classes, mix-ins, operator overloading, contraints on generics, and more.
2020
A day in the life of a professional software engineer
Just a normal day reversing linked lists on the whiteboard.
Three things I wish I’d known learning Rust
It will take longer to learn than most languages, the standard library is small so you’ll need dependencies, and a lot of behavior is in traits.
Quote of the day: A stirring speech
… because, at every new incident, your fortitude was to be called forth, and your courage exhibited; because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking.
The simplest CLI that could possibly work
In Go, what’s the simplest possible way to put all your ad-hoc tools in one place?
Collect and handle multiple errors in Go
In Go, how do you run several operations that might return an error, and return those errors at the end? Here’s how I do it.
2019
A developer goes to a DevOps conference
Two days at PDX DevOpsDays, a gathering of system administrators who use version control, and write a lot of YAML.
2018
Reading MediaRecorder’s webm/opus output
Javascript’s async/await and Promise in a few words
Growing software, in two tweets
2017
What Made Maddy Run
Learn Better – book notes
2016
systemd socket activation in Go
The Joy of systemd
2015
How Ada Lovelace solved problems
Facebook’s code quality problem
Decrypt your HTTPS traffic with mitmproxy
OSCON 2015: Impressions
GopherCon 2015: Favorite talks
We are Equality
Building shared libraries in Go: Part 2
Building shared libraries in Go: Part 1
How memory is allocated
Go: Slice search vs map lookup
Software engineering practices
How I read job postings
Go: The price of interface{}
Science fiction: Ancillary Sword
Quotes from veteran software engineers
Raw sockets in Go: Link layer
Continuous Delivery: my notes
2014
Release It: Write software for production
What a visit from Reddit looks like
Learning assembler on Linux
Dump Go Abstract Syntax Tree
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