Urgent.News

What's breaking now, across thousands of outlets.

Saturday, 24 October 2026 Reading Room

Tech

We should be more ambitious with the software we build

danluu.com ·

In recent months, software developer Michael Malis, known as pgrust, has been demonstrating ambitious projects that aim to improve the Postgres database. Despite skepticism surrounding AI-generated projects, Malis' work has shown thorough testing and uncovered real bugs in Postgres, such as numerical bugs, format cache bugs, and memory safety issues.

While Malis admits pgrust may not be bug-free, the project's testing efforts have already improved Postgres, potentially benefiting other databases like Clickhouse. Malis emphasizes the importance of building ambitious software, as advancements in capabilities allow developers to create more efficient projects, even if not all will succeed.

He shares examples of personal projects, such as a regex engine, ripgrep fork, and Rust compiler optimizations, which have significantly improved performance. These projects, once thought to take years to develop, have been accomplished in just a few hours. Overall, the story highlights the increased potential for building efficient and high-quality software, despite the abundance of low-quality AI-generated projects.

Written by urgent.news from Hacker News's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.

Also reported by 1 other outlet

Read the original at danluu.com →

More in Tech

What fields does a product have? The question that breaks your schema

Try to design the products table for a store. A laptop needs RAM, processor, and inches. A bicycle needs size, material, and number of speeds. A book needs pages and language.

  • Products have distinct fields like RAM, processor speed, screen size, material, and gears
  • Normalization approach uses key-value table and joins, but creates awkward queries
  • Couchbase Capella catalog uses JSON documents with dynamic filtering and aggregations

·dev.to

Message Queue Timeout Issues in Delayed Webhook Delivery for Node.js

Use a delayed queue to wake up reservation expiry, then let a retryable worker make the final decision. The operational rule is simple: set a bounded consume timeout, record why a webhook was slow…

  • Message queue timeouts can disrupt delayed webhook delivery in fintech systems.
  • Logging reservation ID, attempt count, and timeout details aids troubleshooting.
  • Idempotency key prevents multiple processing of the same reservation.

·dev.to

Trace Path: Why Net Displacement Is the Wrong Check

Most grid problems tempt you to simulate. This one gives you a free choice of starting cell, which makes simulation look even more natural: try every cell and see if one survives.

  • Net displacement determines path validity, not move order
  • Track min/max offsets along each axis to validate path
  • Solution reduces problem to two 1D checks in linear time

·dev.to

My Passion for Coding Isn't 404. It's 503.

Last month, I signed up for a hackathon. I opened a fresh file and named it ideas.md . Forty-eight hours later, it was still empty. No meltdown. No rage-quit.

  • Author felt overwhelmed and lost passion for coding
  • Realized treating coding like 404 error was wrong
  • Adopted 503 Service Unavailable mindset for self-care

·dev.to

More from Saturday 24 October →