DanLuu.com is the personal blog of Dan Luu, known for long-form essays that mix systems thinking with careful measurement and clear writing. The topics range from computer latency and input lag, testing versus informal reasoning, and concurrency bugs, to industry pieces on developer compensation and curated lists of programming blogs worth reading. Many posts include data, historical context, and reproducible reasoning, which is why the site is often cited in courses and shared across the developer community. The design is intentionally minimal, which puts all attention on the ideas.
136 articles from this blog
Explains how data alignment affects CPU cache performance, using benchmarks and an analogy to illustrate the impact on speed.
An author critiques the overuse of PCA in data science, arguing it's not a universal solution for classification problems.
Explains why experienced teams are crucial for successful CPU design, contrasting it with the software startup world.
An article discussing how slow response times and ignored pull requests create a hostile environment for new open source contributors.
Analyzes the flaws in Hacker News and Reddit ranking algorithms and proposes a randomized solution to improve content discovery.
Explains Verilog naming conventions and safety practices to prevent hardware design errors like timing issues and clock domain crossing.
An analysis of Verilog's quirks and why seemingly logical code can fail or produce unexpected hardware synthesis results.
About The Blog This started out as a way to jot down thoughts on areas that seem interesting but underappreciated. Since then, this site has grown to
John Carmack's archived article on reducing latency in virtual reality systems to improve user experience and prevent simulator sickness.
A transcript of Kara Swisher's 2019 Twitter interview with Jack Dorsey, focusing on Twitter's progress and responsibility.
Jonathan Shapiro explains why he stopped developing the BitC programming language, citing design issues and lack of funding.
A 2010 debate on whether a single closed platform like Facebook would inevitably dominate social networks, or if a distributed model was possible.
Analyzes the startup culture gap between Boston and Silicon Valley, focusing on entrepreneurial density and university influence.
An analysis of 'sympathy crunch' and work-life balance issues at video game developer Bioware, based on archived forum posts and employee accounts.
Dan Weinreb's rebuttal to Richard Stallman's account of the Symbolics and LMI Lisp machine companies, arguing Stallman's version is biased and inaccurate.
The early development history of the online game SubSpace, from its 1995 inception to its troubled 1998 retail release.
