Daniel Hooper

I Made A Real-Time Build Visualizer Sometimes software takes a long time to compile just due to how much code it has, like in the LLVM project. But often a build is slower than it could be for dumb, fixable reasons. I’ve had the suspici...

I wrote it for my build profiler, more info and early access here: danielchasehooper.com/posts/syscal...

I wrote a UI library in C that can lay out 95000 items at 60fps.

The library is 566 lines of C, and the application-specific ui code is 998 lines. Works on mac, windows, and linux.

in my experience the models small enough to run locally aren't that good. But keeping your code to yourself may be a lost cause if you host your code somewhere like github

Thanks!

Thats one of my most common uses for it. I’m writing a new hash map so I pointed it at the source for several open source implementations to summarize each one’s design

Testing Opus 4.5 For C Programming A grumpy C programmer sees what all the fuss is about

New post: Testing Opus 4.5 For C Programming.

TLDR: it's good, even for curmudgeons like me, but you need to play to its strengths. You don't have to use it like a dumb yolo vibecoder.

danielchasehooper.com/posts/code-a...

I ran into this today with a different button - still no idea what the button does. Just removed it.

Snooping On Slow Builds (Using Syscalls) Many software projects take a long time to compile. Sometimes that’s just due to the sheer amount of code, like in the LLVM project. But often a build is slower than it should be for dumb, fixable rea...

⭐️ New Article: Snooping On Slow Builds (Using syscalls)
danielchasehooper.com/posts/syscal...

A Fast, Growable Array With Stable Pointers in C The C implementation is available here. My last post about generic data structures in C was written to set the stage for today’s topic: A data structure that can be used in place of dynamic arrays,…

⭐️ New Post: A Fast, Growable Array With Stable Pointers in C
danielchasehooper.com/posts/segmen...

The header technique described towards the beginning of my article is effectively that.

Ok, here's the new way I recommend to do type safe generics in C.

It's cleaner compared to my old function-pointer-cast approach, avoids the undefined behavior everyone is so paranoid about, and doesn't require typeof()

Hacked together a weird spiral Mario game prototype

I haven't, thanks for the link.

I used to do that too, but it became problematic in a large, long lived, multi-engineer codebase

New Post: How I Write Type Safe Generic Data Structures in C
danielchasehooper.com/posts/typech...

As a precursor to public key cryptography, William Jevons said in 1874 "What two numbers multiplied together produce 8616460799? I think it unlikely that anyone but I will ever know"

Modern computers find the answer in 0.004s: primes 89681 and 96079

Cool for the time, just needed bigger numbers!

I like this comment in the source of /usr/bin/dtruss. It provides context with a "Hey dorks, don't mess with my code" kind of energy.

Weird time to be someone that likes making tools

Haha so true!

Not a good sign when fixing a bug requires editing a file with this at the top

This was written by a filmmaker about color science, but it applies just as well to the software industry's dependency problem

I ended up doing this: github.com/floooh/sokol...

Github needs this notification option

Tired of getting pinged every time a random person adds their two cents to a Github issue I follow.

I've had that sitting on my games shelf for years but haven't played it, maybe I never will now!

@flohofwoe.bsky.social Is there a trick to get alpha blending working in sokol-gl, or does that require making my own pipeline?

aka:
sgl_begin_triangles();
sgl_c4b(255, 0, 0, 127);
...
sgl_end();

It’s wild that iOS still doesn’t have a “lock orientation *except videos*” mode

That was really nice. I recently realized I haven’t been playing guitar as much I used to, so I’m trying to fix that.

haha yeah, I wasn’t sure how far to take the meme…could have included micro architecture all the way down to electrons!

"C is how a computer actually works"

TIL that CRT "pixels" can have only a portion illuminated, unlike LCD pixels. (Seen on the top and bottom edge of this 'P')

Today I bought an old TV for visual reference. Played Balatro to see how the game's CRT emulation compared to a real Cathode Ray Tube. Sadly details aren't legible on a 13" TV, and the emulation's scanline/phosphor pattern isn't realistic, but it nails the chromatic aberration.

Already exists! “Space” toggles pencil. “Shift + a number” edits pencil digits regardless of pencil mode.