Simen Kjærås outlines an approach to supporting head-mutable types in D without the need for compiler or language changes.

The blog:
https://dlang.org/blog/2020/06/25/a-pattern-for-head-mutable-structures/

Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/hfkq5e/a_pattern_for_headmutable_structures_in_d/

I've also submitted it to HN (please use the search box):

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 11:55:14 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> Simen Kjærås outlines an approach to supporting head-mutable types in D without the need for compiler or language changes.
>
> The blog:
> https://dlang.org/blog/2020/06/25/a-pattern-for-head-mutable-structures/
>
> Reddit:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/hfkq5e/a_pattern_for_headmutable_structures_in_d/
>
> I've also submitted it to HN (please use the search box):
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

What about immutable structs? There is no possible head-mutable type for them.

Deprecate?

On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 11:55:14 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> Simen Kjærås outlines an approach to supporting head-mutable types in D without the need for compiler or language changes.
>
> [snip]

Good piece. I've been following the recent thread, but this really helped make some things clear.

On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 11:55:14 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>
> I've also submitted it to HN (please use the search box):
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

This is a very interesting post. But this strategy with HN is clearly not working. 5 upvotes after 17 hours and 0 comments. Please paste the direct link in future even if the ranking goes down after a few hours. Some publicity is better than nothing at all.

On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 05:37:13 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran wrote:

> This is a very interesting post. But this strategy with HN is clearly not working. 5 upvotes after 17 hours and 0 comments. Please paste the direct link in future even if the ranking goes down after a few hours. Some publicity is better than nothing at all.

Upvotes aren't counted when you follow a direct link. So no, I won't be posting direct links.

On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 06:14:48 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 05:37:13 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran wrote:
>
>> This is a very interesting post. But this strategy with HN is clearly not working. 5 upvotes after 17 hours and 0 comments. Please paste the direct link in future even if the ranking goes down after a few hours. Some publicity is better than nothing at all.
>
> Upvotes aren't counted when you follow a direct link. So no, I won't be posting direct links.

Isn't it possible to just paste to the search results? https://hn.algolia.com/?q=A+pattern+for+head+mutable

Then presumably after clicking on comments you would be allowed to upvote.

On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 05:37:13 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran wrote:
> This is a very interesting post. But this strategy with HN is clearly not working. 5 upvotes after 17 hours and 0 comments. Please paste the direct link in future even if the ranking goes down after a few hours. Some publicity is better than nothing at all.

To be honest... I use D and don't really understand what the blog post is about (I don't really care much for const and such). I just glance through it and nothing catches my eye. I imagine any non-D user would completely ignore this blog post. It's a nice blog post for D users who are into this topic, but it's not something that would grab general attention. Also the premise of "D's const is hard to use, here's a way to deal with it" is not very optimistic. People here might think "wow, that's a nifty trick", but most outsiders would just think "wow that const thing is pain in the ass".

Here's some examples of blog posts that got popular on reddit last week. They're short enough and can be understood without deep understanding of the language:

https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/06/19/a-little-bit-of-plain-javascript-can-do-a-lot/
https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/

On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 06:52:58 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

>
> Isn't it possible to just paste to the search results? https://hn.algolia.com/?q=A+pattern+for+head+mutable
>
> Then presumably after clicking on comments you would be allowed to upvote.

I wouldn't be so sure. See the "Anti-Voting Manipulation" section here:

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

"One popular "trick" for obfuscating voting manipulation on Hacker News is to link to the Hacker News's /newest page of new submissions (instead of a direct link which would otherwise make voting manipulation obvious), and asking friends to upvote the submission from that page. This trick doesn't actually work."

I suspect they track HTTP referrers and red flag multiple hits to the same link from the same referrer. However they do it, I would expect linking directly to search results is something they account for.

On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 07:35:17 UTC, JN wrote:
>
>
> Here's some examples of blog posts that got popular on reddit last week. They're short enough and can be understood without deep understanding of the language:

We've had long, D-specific posts be successful on reddit on more than one occasion. On HN as well. Sometimes they catch on, sometimes they don't. I always aim for an optimal window on reddit [1] and sometimes use an alternative, catchier title if it fits (I learned a valuable lesson with Liran's interview when I didn't include "the World's Fastest File System" in the reddit post -- I used it on HN and it hit big).

But I've noticed these days that most of our successful blog posts have a slow burn on reddit. They stay in the low teens for a day or so and then start to tick up. More interesting to me is the upvote *rate*. Anything over 75% makes me happy. As I write, Simen's post has 14 upvotes and an 82% upvote rate. And no D bashing in the comments. In my book, that's a successful post.

HN is always hit or miss. Unlike /r/programming, the HN front page changes rapidly. When a post catches on, it's always big. Otherwise it fades away quickly. From what I can tell it's mostly a matter of timing there. Also, if I don't share a post on HN, someone else inevitably will. And it's the same story: big or nothing.

[1] https://dashboard.laterforreddit.com/analysis/?subreddit=%2Fr%2Fprogramming&threshold=5

On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 07:35:17 UTC, JN wrote:
> On Friday, 26 June 2020 at 05:37:13 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran wrote:
>> This is a very interesting post. But this strategy with HN is clearly not working. 5 upvotes after 17 hours and 0 comments. Please paste the direct link in future even if the ranking goes down after a few hours. Some publicity is better than nothing at all.
>
> To be honest... I use D and don't really understand what the blog post is about (I don't really care much for const and such). I just glance through it and nothing catches my eye. I imagine any non-D user would completely ignore this blog post. It's a nice blog post for D users who are into this topic, but it's not something that would grab general attention. Also the premise of "D's const is hard to use, here's a way to deal with it" is not very optimistic. People here might think "wow, that's a nifty trick", but most outsiders would just think "wow that const thing is pain in the ass".
>
> Here's some examples of blog posts that got popular on reddit last week. They're short enough and can be understood without deep understanding of the language:
>
> https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/06/19/a-little-bit-of-plain-javascript-can-do-a-lot/
> https://kristoff.it/blog/zig-colorblind-async-await/

For a while I thought it was just me but the D blog posts addressing D specific nifty tricks mostly don't interest me. Benchmarks, const, etc... :(. Probably it's just because of my area of interest or how they're articulated.

But stuff about a companies using D for this and that or a community member sharing their thing comes out very interesting.

I myself will be interested in doing some less technical but more practical posts. Probably comparing and contrasting packages, tools, community and stuff.

I'm curious what's happening in those D meetups. Are they still happening (online)?