DXGI debugging: Microsoft put me on a list

Why does Space Station 14 crash with ANGLE on ARM64? 6 hours later…

So. I’ve been continuing work on getting ARM64 builds out for Space Station 14. The thing I was working on yesterday were launcher builds, specifically a single download that supports both ARM64 and x64. I’d already gotten the game client itself running natively on ARM64,

https://www.osnews.com/story/143409/dxgi-debugging-microsoft-put-me-on-a-list/

We need to seriously think about what to do with C++ modules

Jussi Pakkanen, creator of the Meson build system, has some words about modules in C++.

If C++ modules can not show a 5× compilation time speedup (preferably 10×) on multiple existing open source code base, modules should be killed and taken out of the standard. Without this speedup pouring any more res

https://www.osnews.com/story/143244/we-need-to-seriously-think-about-what-to-do-with-c-modules/

MS-DOS development resources

If you're interested in developing for and programming on MS-DOS and other variants of the venerable operating system, SuperIlu has collected the various tools and applications they use and like for this very task. In case you're wondering who SuperIlu is - they are the developer of things like DOStodon, a Mastodon client for DOS, DOjS, and much more.

This is my s

https://www.osnews.com/story/143119/ms-dos-development-resources/

Vibe-coding yourself into irrelevance

"Claude Code has considerably changed my relationship to writing and maintaining code at scale. I still write code at the same level of quality, but I feel like I have a new freedom of expression which is hard to fully articulate.

Claude Code has decoupled myself from writing every line of code, I still consider myself fully responsible for e..." (This is just the quoted part of an article I'm responding to).

https://www.osnews.com/story/142956/vibe-coding-yourself-into-irrelevance/

“Hello world” in Bismuth

Late last year, we talked about Bismuth, a virtual machine being developed by Eniko Fox, one of the developers of the awesome game Kitsune Tails. Part of a operating systems development side project, Bismuth is a VM (think Java Virtual Machine, not VMware) on top of Fox' custom kernel, designed specifically to run programs in a sandbox. The first article detailed the origin

https://www.osnews.com/story/142943/hello-world-in-bismuth/

Accessibility programming doesn’t feel accessible

Accessibility is something that doesn't get nearly enough attention, especially considering because not only will we need accessibility features eventually as we grow older, but also because a lot of accessibility features are just helpful even if you don't technically need them. Given these facts, it's a shame that accessibi

https://www.osnews.com/story/142599/accessibility-programming-doesnt-feel-accessible/

Rust celebrates ten year anniversary with Rust 1.87.0 release

I generally don't pay attention to the releases of programming languages unless they're notable for some reason or another, and I think this one qualifies. Rust is celebrating its ten year anniversary with a brand new release, Rust 1.87.0. This release adds anonymous pipes to the standard library, inlin

https://www.osnews.com/story/142377/rust-celebrates-ten-year-anniversary-with-rust-1-87-0-release/

“AI” automated PR reviews mostly useless junk

The team that makes Cockpit, the popular server dashboard software, decided to see if they could improve their PR review processes by adding "AI" into the mix. They decided to test both sourcey.ai and GitHub Copilot PR reviews, and their conclusions are damning.

About half of the AI reviews were noise, a quarter bikeshedding. Th

https://www.osnews.com/story/142323/ai-automated-pr-reviews-mostly-useless-junk/

Reverse-engineering Fujitsu M7MU RELC hardware compression

This is a follow-up to the Samsung NX mini (M7MU) firmware reverse-engineering series. This part is about the proprietary LZSS compression used for the code sections in the firmware of Samsung NX mini, NX3000/NX3300 and Galaxy K Zoom. The post is documenting the step-by-step discovery process, in order to sho

https://www.osnews.com/story/142317/reverse-engineering-fujitsu-m7mu-relc-hardware-compression/

The subjective charms of Objective-C

To argue that Objective-C resembles a metaphysically divine language, or even a good language, is like saying Shakespeare is best appreciated in pig latin. Objective-C is, at best, polarizing. Ridiculed for its unrelenting verbosity and peculiar square brackets, it is used only for building Mac and iPhone apps and would have faded into obscurity in the

https://www.osnews.com/story/142105/the-subjective-charms-of-objective-c/

Elliptical Python programming

One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom.
↫ Susam Pal

I can't program and know nothing about Python, but this still made me laugh.

https://www.osnews.com/story/142099/elliptical-python-programming/

The insanity of being a software engineer

Software gets more complicated. All of this complexity is there for a reason. But what happened to specializing? When a house is being built, tons of people are involved: architects, civil engineers, plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, interior designers, roofers, surveyors, pavers, you name it. You don’t expect a single person, or even a wh

https://www.osnews.com/story/142071/the-insanity-of-being-a-software-engineer/

Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax

There isn't a lot to this story beyond the fact that in around 1990 I helped debug someone's Lotus 1-2-3 set up via fax. But it's a good reminder of how important the Zeroth Law of Debugging is (see below).

Without some sort of online connection with these folks, and with transatlantic phone calls being very, very expensive (I was in the UK, they were in the US) fa

https://www.osnews.com/story/142044/debugging-lotus-1-2-3-by-fax/

A 10x Faster TypeScript

To meet those goals, we’ve begun work on a native port of the TypeScript compiler and tools. The native implementation will drastically improve editor startup, reduce most build times by 10x, and substantially reduce memory usage. By porting the current codebase, we expect to be able to preview a native implementation of tsc capable of command-line typechecking by mid-2025, wit

https://www.osnews.com/story/141896/a-10x-faster-typescript/

C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from ‘serious attacks’

Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++, has issued a call for the C++ community to defend the programming language, which has been shunned by cybersecurity agencies and technical experts in recent years for its memory safety shortcomings.

C and C++ are built around ma

https://www.osnews.com/story/141836/c-creator-calls-for-help-to-defend-programming-language-from-serious-attacks/

zlib-rs is faster than C

I'm sure we can all have a calm, rational discussion about this, so here it goes: zlib-rs, the Rust re-implementation of the zlib library, is now faster than its C counterparts in both decompression and compression.

We've released version 0.4.2 of zlib-rs, featuring a number of substantial performance improvements. We are now (to our knowledge) the fastest api-compatible

https://www.osnews.com/story/141809/zlib-rs-is-faster-than-c/

Cassette: a POSIX application framework featuring a retro-futurist GUI toolkit

Cassette is a GUI application framework written in C11, with a UI inspired by the cassette-futurism aesthetic. Built for modern POSIX systems, it's made out of three libraries: CGUI, CCFG and COBJ. Cassette is free and open-source software, licensed under the LGPL-3.0.
↫

https://www.osnews.com/story/141697/cassette-a-posix-application-framework-featuring-a-retro-futurist-gui-toolkit/

Hands-on graphics without X11 using NetBSD’s wscons

Now, if you have been following the development of EndBASIC, this is not surprising. The defining characteristic of the EndBASIC console is that it’s hybrid as the video shows. What’s newsworthy, however, is that the EndBASIC console can now run directly on a framebuffer exposed by the kernel. No X11 nor Wayland in the pi

https://www.osnews.com/story/141565/hands-on-graphics-without-x11-using-netbsds-wscons/

An operating system in 1000 lines

Hey there! In this book, we're going to build a small operating system from scratch, step by step.

You might get intimidated when you hear OS or kernel development, the basic functions of an OS (especially the kernel) are surprisingly simple. Even Linux, which is often cited as a huge open-source software, was only 8,413 lines in version 0.01. Today's Lin

https://www.osnews.com/story/141502/an-operating-system-in-1000-lines/

A twenty-five year old curl bug

When we announced the security flaw CVE-2024-11053 on December 11, 2024 together with the release of curl 8.11.1 we fixed a security bug that was introduced in a curl release 9039 days ago. That is close to twenty-five years.

The previous record holder was CVE-2022-35252 at 8729 days.
↫ Daniel Stenberg

Ir's really quite fascinating to see details like this

https://www.osnews.com/story/141320/a-twenty-five-year-old-curl-bug/