Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderReminds me of a startup I worked for in the 1990s. The C code base was organized into "units" (modules). Each unit allocated/destroyed its own data structures, but used the "ref" unit to return a reference (really, a handle) instead of a pointer. Each module used a "deref" function to convert the handle to a typed pointer for internal use. ref used many of the tricks described in the above post, including an incrementing counter to catch stale handles. All…
A few years ago I wanted to make a shoot-em-up game using C# and XNA I could play with my kids on an Xbox. It worked fine except for slight pauses for GC every once in a while which ruined the experience. The best solution I found was to get rid of objects and allocation entirely and instead store the state of the game in per-type tables like in this article. Then I realized that I didn't need per-type tables…
> and may even be useful in higher-level garbage-collected languages to reduce pressure on the garbage collector. > The approach described here works very well though with a data-oriented architecture, where central systems work on arrays of data items packed tightly in memory. I have been pushing us into a new data-oriented architecture for our software, but for reasons of domain modeling (managing complexity) rather than performance. This is a very interesting read from my perspective. Let me give an…
Remove the raw pointer footguns and you're basically turning C/C++ into a version of Object Pascal or FreeBasic. And we all know that "real programmers" wouldn't want that.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 596
- Total comments
- 247
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-06-17 | Handles are the better pointersFirst breakout | ingve | 194 | 80 |
| 2020-06-05 | Handles are the better pointers (2018) | generichuman | 15 | 0 |
| 2020-08-12 | Handles Are the Better Pointers | LinuxBender | 1 | 0 |
| 2020-08-13 | Handles Are the Better Pointers | signa11 | 1 | 0 |
| 2020-08-14 | Handles are the better pointers (2018) | mpweiher | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-04-02 | Handles are the better pointers (2018) | zdw | 152 | 88 |
| 2022-12-24 | Handles are the better pointers (2018) | Tomte | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-03-22 | Handles are the better pointers (2018) | signa11 | 2 | 0 |
| 2023-06-21 | Handles Are the Better PointersBest thread · Latest 20+ point return | ibobev | 223 | 78 |
| 2025-02-09 | Handles are better pointers (2018) | brunojppb | 1 | 0 |
| 2025-03-16 | Handles are the better pointers (2018) | thebeardisred | 2 | 0 |
| 2025-06-11 | Handles are the better pointers (2018) | thunderbong | 2 | 1 |
| 2025-06-11 | Handles Are the Better Pointers (2018) | thunderbong | 1 | 0 |