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 orderOne of my favorite techniques for implementing VMs is the "computed goto": https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2012/07/12/computed-goto-for-e... Consider this example for dispatching instructions from the article: while (running) { uint16_t op = mem_read(reg[R_PC]++) >> 12; switch (op) { case OP_ADD: {ADD, 6} break; case OP_AND: {AND, 7} break; case OP_NOT: {NOT, 7} break; case OP_BR: {BR, 7} break; ... } } That code has a lot of branching. The switch statement has to jump to the corresponding case, the break statement…
I was tricked into writing a VM while doing Advent of Code last year and it really deepened my understanding of programming (e.g., on how to implement simple coroutines). Advent of Code is supposed to be 25 daily programming puzzles leading up to christmas. I went in thinking they were going to be algo/datastructure tasks but half of them were actually about implementing and using a VM for a made up assembly language! The difficulty ramp was gradual enough 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
- 2
- Total points
- 880
- Total comments
- 119
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-12-14 | Write Your Own Virtual MachineFirst breakout · Best thread | vedosity | 546 | 77 |
| 2020-08-15 | Write Your Own Virtual MachineLatest 20+ point return | ChankeyPathak | 326 | 42 |
| 2021-12-09 | Write Your Own Virtual Machine | signa11 | 8 | 0 |