Skip to content
HomeVideosBooksBlogs
AllTop postsTopics
Podcasts
HistoryListsWatch laterLiked videosFollowing

The videos, books, blogs and podcasts Hacker News keeps recommending, all in one place.

VideosBooksBlogsPodcastsAboutPrivacySettings

Data from Hacker News, HackerTube, HackerBooks, HackerBlogs and Open Library. Credits · Not affiliated with Y Combinator.

HomeVideosBooksBlogsPodcasts
Ctrl K
    A

    Andrew Helwer

    ahelwer.ca · Personal blog · on HN since 2019

    Andrew Helwer writes about formal methods like TLA+ and Z3, C++ bugs, security tokens, and quantum computing.

    Visit blogRSSHN submissions
    ProgrammingLanguages & CompilersScience
    What HN says

    HN commenters link his posts comparing Python and TLA+ pseudocode and explaining quantum computing, and one lists his feed among blogs worth following.

    Stats for nerds
    16HN people shared it
    33linked in comments
    582story points
    Apr 2024last shared
    2021people per year2024

    Top posts on HN

    1. 1
      The current state of TLA⁺ development
      1 person · 142 points · first shared 2025 · 42 comments on HN
    2. 2
      Doing a math assignment with the Lean theorem prover
      1 person · 141 points · first shared 2020 · 29 comments on HN
    3. 3
      How do you reason about a probabilistic distributed system?
      1 person · 112 points · first shared 2020 · 15 comments on HN
    4. 4
      Let go of StackOverflow; communities must take ownership
      1 person · 69 points · first shared 2025 · 86 comments on HN
    5. 5
      Taking my home work setup seriously: ergonomics and setting in for the long haul
      1 person · 22 points · first shared 2020 · 2 comments on HN
    6. 6
      Google Groups has been left to die
      1 person · 18 points · first shared 2023 · 9 comments on HN
    7. 7
      Can sanitizers find the two bugs I wrote in C++?
      2 people · 12 points · first shared 2023 · 3 comments on HN
    8. 8
      A supposedly worthwhile contract I'll never do again
      1 person · 11 points · first shared 2025 · Discussion on HN
    9. 9
      TLA⁺ is more than a DSL for breadth-first search
      1 person · 9 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
    10. 10
      Laptops all have built-in security tokens these days
      2 people · 6 points · first shared 2026 · Discussion on HN

    What HN people wrote when they linked it

    • dotnet00Apr 2024

      This seems like a decent explanation of what I had in mind: https://oxsci.org/quantum-computing-for-quantum-chemistry/ and this one a slightly more math based explanation: https://ahelwer.ca/post/2019-12-21-quantum-chemistry/

      I'm trying to recall another far less outlandish result (than wormholes) that was also verified via quantum computer, but no dice at the moment.

      Edit: I might've been thinking of the simulation of a discrete time crystal on Google's quantum computer: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/131

      'The researchers stress that this DTC behavior can also, in principle, be simulated on a classical computer. But in that case, “the bits in the computer evolve in a way that looks nothing like the physics we're interested in but nevertheless output numbers that replicate the outcomes of a hypothetical experiment,” Ippoliti says. In contrast, on a quantum computer, the qubits themselves exhibit the DTC behavior.'

    • jayaprabhakarApr 2024

      When publishing algorithms for others' consumption either for a paper or blog, please post the source code.

      This post is a follow up of https://ahelwer.ca/post/2023-03-30-pseudocode/

      Where Andrew pointed compared executable Python code vs executable model checker PlusCal.

      In this blog, I'm showing how to model check Python code with minor changes.

      For the curious, model checking is the formal methods technique that explores every possible path to ensure the invariants are met in every case.

    • htgbApr 2022

      https://danluu.com/atom.xml
      https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
      https://fasterthanli.me/index.xml
      https://ahelwer.ca/index.xml
      https://www.erlang.org/blog.xml
      https://drewdevault.com/blog/index.xml
      https://norvig.com/rss-feed.xml

    • ahelwerJun 2021

      I made a lecture aimed at such people (I was such a person!), which has proven popular: https://youtu.be/F_Riqjdh2oM

      With a follow-up blog post focusing on entanglement: https://ahelwer.ca/post/2018-12-07-chsh/

    Related

    Hillel Waynehillelwayne.com294 people

    1/0 = 0

    Hillel Wayne
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Lambda the Ultimatelambda-the-ultimate.org615 people

    Simon Peyton Jones Elected into the Royal Society Fellowship

    Lambda the Ultimate
    Publication · last shared 2026
    Ron Presslerpron.github.io36 people

    TLA+ in Practice and Theory, Part 4: Order in TLA+

    Ron Pressler
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Stephen Diehlstephendiehl.com209 people

    What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell

    Stephen Diehl
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Unlimited Noveltyunlimitednovelty.com42 people

    Node.js has jumped the shark

    Unlimited Novelty
    Personal · last shared 2023
    Jeremy Kunjeremykun.com194 people

    A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

    Jeremy Kun
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Not a Monad Tutorialnotamonadtutorial.com40 people

    Weld: Accelerating numpy, scikit and pandas as much as 100x with Rust and LLVM

    Not a Monad Tutorial
    Publication · last shared 2023
    Existential Typeexistentialtype.wordpress.com157 people

    Haskell Is Exceptionally Unsafe (2012)

    Existential Type
    Personal · last shared 2026