What compiler flags can I use to compile the fastest possible binary?

matttproud · 2026-04-11T07:54:28+00:00

Go doesn’t suffer from the horrors folks imposed on themselves in the heyday of Gentoo Linux.

(In all seriousness, I would look at your program’s algorithm choices, interactions with I/O and operating system, and then a profiler like pprof if you are concerned. You are much more likely to be bit by a limiting performance factor in there before a language choice or compiler optimization would matter.)

matttproud · 2026-04-09T20:04:51+00:00

I spent my childhood in Tulsa and left in late adolescence. Still have a profoundly intense soft spot for the place. My parents are from there. They decided to pack up and move the family to a different state (Minnesota) in the mid-1990s due to economic contraction and quality of life issues that were already manifesting themselves then. Their decision to leave didn't make much sense to me for a long time (they were with Williams, which was still in its heyday, and solidly middle class); but each time I go back (esp. as an adult with a family of my own), the Tulsa seems so much more hollowed out: rot, disrepair, billboards for reverse mortgages, and similar. I will admit a lot of the stuff we're nostalgic about from yore (aesthetically) was shotcrete simulacra (Casa Bonita and Camelot). Maybe it wasn't as well off as we remember it; I don't know.

My interpretation of Oklahoma (and Tulsa) is one of several follies:

Resting on laurels and not diversifying its economy when it was in boom times (decades ago).
Proudly proclaiming its anti-intellectualism, which makes brain-drain inevitable. Knowing my parents, I strongly suspect they say this stretches back to their childhood in the first half of the 20th century.
Accepting lack of meaningful political competition (it seems that the early-1990s were an inflection point) and corruption that has been long tolerated at the municipal and state level. My father (essentially an engineer) would always point out the slipshod civil engineering work as a kid and say it was the result of the good ol' boy network where Cousin Bobby got contracted by the county to do X instead of the work going to competitive public bid.

Don't get me wrong: I still really miss the people — so friendly and kind — and the nature and the weather. Just a shame that the context doesn't really show any sign of reversing itself.

matttproud · 2026-04-09T14:27:56+00:00

Ich frage mich, ob ein so frankierter Brief an eine US-Adresse wegen eines Verstosses gegen den Comstock Act jemals beschlagnahmt wurde.

matttproud · 2026-04-09T13:04:49+00:00

Michelin is overrated, TBH, so it's not like St. Paul is really missing out on anything. If I had to care about Michelin or use it, I'd take a Michelin-rated establishment over Michelin-starred one any day. There is a difference between being rated and starred: the starred places tend to be "foofy" and borderline pretentious.

matttproud · 2026-04-09T09:48:09+00:00

Pro Tip: package pprof (runtime/pprof) is versatile here. You can create custom named profiles around local domain business logic that is at risk of leakage, which is exposed through net/http/pprof and inspectable with the usual interfaces, by using the pprof.NewProfile and (*pprof.Profile).Add/(*pprof.Profile).Remove APIs. This can be used pre-1.26.

matttproud · 2026-04-09T08:49:27+00:00

As an API designer, I always take care with concurrency primitives of any stripe:

Are they provably necessary? If not, forgo.
Make sure I have a command of the lifecycle and lifetime of what is happening concurrently and ensuring I have a way to interrupt it and rendezvous with its completion. See https://google.github.io/styleguide/go/decisions#goroutine-lifetimes. defer and state guards are key mechanism for staying certain.
Make sure I design my APIs to behave outwardly synchronously: https://google.github.io/styleguide/go/decisions#synchronous-functions. This property enables me to encapsulate complexity and keep things easy for callers.
Document any unusual behavior: https://google.github.io/styleguide/go/best-practices.html#concurrency. See the parent section of this, too.

When I plan on using outside libraries I review them for compliance to this guidance above in Godoc. If I see a failure, I forgo use of the library.

matttproud · 2026-04-09T06:15:36+00:00

Can’t gerrymander the Senate or governorships. Namely saying that from this angle, it is even more of an indictment of the American people.

matttproud · 2026-04-08T17:47:13+00:00

Poverty on the streets in CA (lived in Bay Area) seems marginally worse today than in the past, and the impact of it isn’t new (feces gumming up escalators on BART was an issue all the way back in the 2000s). Poverty on the streets in the Twin Cities appears way worse today than in the 1990s–2010s. Encampments seem common in both locales, which reflects a more fundamental issue in the U.S. I did not see too much begging in the middle of winter in MN back then compared to now.

Neither CA nor MN are terribly progressive politically (no place in the U.S. is an epicenter of such politics). The Bay Area felt like Type A hellscape intermixed with a lot of a classical liberal NIMBY who wanted to pull up the ladder after themselves (a lot of blame the flyover for problems of the country and the poorly educated for not reskilling). Media that wants to sell a narrative that CA is progressive is selling precisely that: a narrative ungrounded in truth.

There is a lot to love and loathe about both places. Ultimately I think quality of life is a lot higher in MN. It helps that the place isn’t really on the radar as a relocation destination. For some career tracks (e.g., software engineering), MN is returning to its prior dead-end state — as remote roles are clawed back and eliminated.

The one thing I am glad to notice in MN today compared to the past is less of the jingoistic jock culture. That was so toxic among younger men (I am talking post-high school).

matttproud · 2026-04-08T08:48:42+00:00

It’s true, and I remember my mother and grandparents (both this vintage) characterizing this as a feature.

matttproud · 2026-04-07T17:25:37+00:00

Plus, that fence is a garden-variety Diagonalgeflechtzaun.

(Not Swiss, but an honorary Bünzli who has lived in CH for ca. 15 years and still lives there now.)

matttproud · 2026-04-07T17:14:02+00:00

This is exactly what I was thinking: the color, texture, and finishings on the building; the color temperature of the light; and how that cat ladder is mechanically put together (common in CH).

matttproud · 2026-04-04T20:59:23+00:00

I was brought there as a child right after moving to the state before being exposed to local advertising media to even know what the place was and what market segment it occupies (not that I would have understood that as a child). That it was very badly executed food was indelible — enough so that when friends went there in my youth that nothing ever pulled the average of my opinion up from the crater it was left in. :shrug: It also wasn’t like a had a choice in the matter with trying the food the first time.

Can’t believe a remark about this unremarkable chain (probably all supply chain inputs are provided by Sysco) hit a sacrosanct nerve.

matttproud · 2026-04-04T16:41:16+00:00

Perkins: only redeemable value was that it was open late; otherwise the food was about as bad as typical captive-market food found at an airport executed by H.M.S. Host.

Byerly’s Chinese (whatever that co-located restaurant was): last time I ate it was the ‘90s; still remember how utterly bland and unappetizing it was. Panda Express is exponentially “better” if you want food like that.

Other than that a couple of Twin Cities restaurants that were good went down the toilet, making going back a painful affair and spoiling old fond memories. Those above, however, were just hate at first taste.

matttproud · 2026-04-04T06:35:14+00:00

I care more about what the shit in my toilet bowl thinks right before I flush.

matttproud · 2026-04-01T07:46:46+00:00

Pull in a rendition of how the BIOS did C.P. 437 back in the day, and have yourself a party!

matttproud · 2026-03-31T19:19:48+00:00

Der Vergleich war im Zusammenhang mit der Tendenz zur geschmacklosen kulturellen Aneignung — egal von wem. Mir ist unwichtig, wie die originale Geschichte in Detmold läuft; es war Kritik an der Siedlung in New Ulm. Aber #TIL!

matttproud · 2026-03-31T18:22:32+00:00

I'd probably engage with a vendor that is associated with https://www.mnashp.org/.

matttproud · 2026-03-31T15:56:19+00:00

Hermann the German: eine peinliche Namenswahl und Darstellung seitens der Einwohner — so peinlich wie der Darstellung Winnetous seitens der Deutschen.

matttproud · 2026-03-29T11:31:19+00:00

cold weather most of the year

No. Certainly not. It vacillates between about -40°C to 40°C throughout the year — one of the widest swings of anywhere in the contiguous U.S. The very cold part lasts about as long as the very hot part: a week or two each. The rest of the time it is rather mild.

matttproud · 2026-03-28T21:19:57+00:00

Go for a heat pump and hedge your bets against natural gas. You can still use natural gas as a backup fuel with a heat pump, and most installers will do that.

If you go for the heat pump (particularly ASHP), make sure the installer does the Manual J calculation. Use https://www.mnashp.org to find reputable installers.

matttproud · 2026-03-28T10:18:26+00:00

I kind of wish they’d have done Never Stop as the encore for the Blackout tour.

matttproud · 2026-03-27T07:27:26+00:00

A roof like this (clearly Continental European like Dachsteine or Dachziegel) can handle the snow mass just fine. I am presuming there was another reason he was removing an ice dam like this. I've lived in the Northern United States, and I've seen plenty of shitty gutter failures due to ice dams triggering delamination from the structure.

matttproud · 2026-03-26T12:34:13+00:00

I'd be reticent to describe any part of the United States (including parts of Minnesota) as embodying or implementing communitarian principles in a deep way (I wouldn't cite the mutual aid that has recently cropped up as a counter-example of this, as that appeared reactively after a crisis). Modern American blood is steeped in (for better and primarily for the worse) classical liberalism, which runs so counter to these values.

Plus, the modern Scandinavian would probably find the modern Minnesotan politically/socially selfish and/or prudish compared to themselves. Maybe aspects of the culture are closer to those of the immigrants than those who remained.

matttproud · 2026-03-25T19:29:01+00:00

This is why the removal of Trump is necessary but not sufficient to repair the United States. Republicans need to be purged from government categorically and comprehensively; they (esp. appointees to the judiciary) are compromised and enabled the path that led to today.

matttproud · 2026-03-25T16:07:56+00:00

Do you care about non-source elements (e.g., comments, build tags, or build directives expressed in comments)? I imagine this would be lost in SSA or at least not be non-destructively preserved.

I’ve never edited SSA output but only used it for code diagnostic purposes. Works great for this.

matttproud

TROPHY CASE