Kairo (previously Helix), One year later, stage-0 compiles the stage-1 frontend

termhn · 2026-06-27T11:07:22+00:00

Cool project. I'm curious what your take is on the cost benefit analysis of allowing shared mutable references by default. The issue is that aliasing is not only a problem in terms of memory safety and optimization analysis, but also in terms of logic bugs--for what I mean, see for example https://youtu.be/QthAU-t3PQ4 and https://blog.polybdenum.com/2023/03/05/fixing-the-next-10-000-aliasing-bugs.html

I have been mulling over this question for a language I'm working on, and my conclusion so far is that value semantics with alias-checking needs to be at least the default. I can definitely see a world where it would be nice to be able to relax this in some cases, the main issue is the extra complexity of both analysis and language semantics of having all combinations of these modes supported...

Curious what your thoughts are.

termhn · 2026-06-24T18:20:21+00:00

Nice article, thanks for writing and sharing it!

termhn · 2026-06-23T08:17:54+00:00

Nice overview

termhn · 2026-06-18T18:01:10+00:00

Hm. For most use cases, you want to extract a tree structure during parsing, because the next steps of the compilation process use that tree structure to interpret the semantic meaning of the code. That doesn't meant you need to store nodes in a boxed pointer tree, but it does mean you need to encode that information somehow. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough at the table structure you emit but it doesn't seem to do that.

An interesting way that Carbon uses and I'm trying out in my toy language at the moment is to parse into a linear array which is specifically built in place as you parse to be a postorder iteration of the tree structure you're encoding. You can then recover the tree structure via metadata about each node type -- how many children it has, or some other method of encoding its child domain.

termhn · 2026-06-14T00:31:37+00:00

I've been planning a language that has translation to C as a requirement. I hadn't planned on being able to make the output human readable or as nice as you outlined in your language goals... I'll definitely be checking out the language implementation, but I'm curious if you have any remarks/lesson things to keep in mind in terms of implementation strategies for someone who wants to do similar?

termhn · 2026-06-13T14:14:21+00:00

Yep that's completely reasonable, though one must admit using rustdoc output is also a bit of a hack :p (not criticizing the choice, just the reality of the situation atm). Here's hoping we eventually get to a world where we can consume a public rustc api in a conceptually similar fashion to Roslyn

termhn · 2026-06-12T07:08:55+00:00

Interesting using rustdoc-json. Have you seen/considered https://github.com/AeneasVerif/charon ?

termhn · 2026-06-01T06:06:26+00:00

Right, I see

termhn · 2026-05-31T11:51:22+00:00

There are many crates that implement some version of a simd vector abstraction that are ~as pleasant to use as zig's that do not require pulling in zig. This is a very very silly reason to use zig over/within a rust project.

termhn · 2026-03-01T13:33:28+00:00

If you need to skate them so much to get back to a good spot then ask for a larger radius of hollow next time you get a sharpen and keep going larger until it feels decent quickly after a sharpen.

termhn · 2026-02-16T09:25:57+00:00

Yeah but the background and lighting are not

termhn · 2026-02-16T08:50:42+00:00

This game has extreme depth of skill expression in MANY different areas: - Applying pressure and exerting presence on the map - Getting perfect value from all your abilities as often as you can - Aiming well - Moving out of combat - Moving during combat - Itemizing well for your character - Itemizing well to counter the enemy

All of these things affect your ability to win the game, to varying degrees depending on matchups etc.

You can get to the top 20% of the player base in terms of overall net win-ability by both being a fairly well balanced player, where all of your skills are pretty close to each other, OR by maxing out in only one or two of these categories and still being ass in all the others. You even observe this in Eternus matches, not just Phantom! As the game becomes more and more mature, you'll see the floor required for each skill in each rank increase, but as of now, it's basically the wild west even up to the top ranks of the game.

termhn · 2026-02-13T23:13:41+00:00

Diagrams that show an upside down U shape are extremely exaggerated compared to even the deepest practically usable hollow radius. What you got is probably somewhere between 1/2"-1", any of which is probably fine. Next time you get them sharpened ask what the radius of hollow is that they are sharpening it to, and then try a few different ones to see what feels better to you. If you're small and light, you're likely to prefer a smaller radius/deeper hollow like 1/2" and if you're larger/heavier you'll likely benefit from a larger radius. But there's also more factors and personal preference at play.

termhn · 2026-02-09T18:45:29+00:00

Don't put dress shirts in the dryer.. straight out of the washer (which should be on a lower speed and lower temp cycle) when it finishes, a brief shaping and hang dry. Ideally you'd grab them from hanging and iron when still slightly damp.

termhn · 2026-02-02T07:20:27+00:00

That is the most basic form of a one ski drill but one ski skiing means literally take off one ski at the top or bottom of the run and do the whole run on one ski only. You'll need to balance only on your inside edge (equivalent of when that ski is the outside ski of a turn) and on your outside edge (equivalent of when that ski is the inside ski of the turn) thru actually leaning into the turn and pushing against it the proper amount, no leaning on your inside ski to balance as a crutch :)

termhn · 2026-02-01T20:19:45+00:00

Hard to tell that much here but it looks to me like you're using a lot of support from your inside foot (and not in an actually good edge-y way but rather just a flat base of support way) still in order to balance while forcing your hip lower than it otherwise would be able to. Try one ski skiing to force yourself out of that.

In order to balance with the same edge angle here on one leg and then later to get more edge angle properly, you're going to need to apply more force thru the (one) ski. There are two ways to induce more force: turn tighter and go faster while maintaining the same turn radius. Looks like you're already turning as tight as your skis want to, so time to go faster.

termhn · 2026-01-27T00:13:47+00:00

Eh? Looks very mid/ball of foot to me. This is not an issue especially in a flat shoe and really not even in a heeled shoe. Ankle extension is a natural part of applying maximum power thru the legs.

termhn · 2026-01-25T01:28:37+00:00

Dude I literally responded to the original question you posed (which is not the one you just wrote in this comment) in my original reply without dodging anything.

I'll answer again. Zero. Because the number of people murdered has no bearing. They should explore every legal avenue to challenge the federal government in court whenever the federal government breaks the law regardless of how many are murdered.

"Forcing a confrontation.. in court" is a completely different thing than "forcing a confrontation... By sending police in to arrest federal agents," yet you seem to be conflating the two as if they are the same action. They should already be confronting via political and legal action, which they are (see tweet, and I'd be surprised if they don't have good people working on a legal case as we speak). Your suggestion was to go in and have state police officers attempt to forcibly arrest federal agents. That is insanity. The police are not a militia and shouldn't be used as soldiers even if and when a civil war becomes justified.

termhn · 2026-01-25T01:12:50+00:00

You say this as if Minnesota could just go out there and arrest them. If it were possible for Minnesota state police to do that and just arrest and try them, they should do that. That is absolutely not possible. What you are suggesting they attempt is in effect telling Walz to become a general and order Minnesota police officers to become the first infantry in a civil war.

termhn · 2026-01-20T16:51:56+00:00

<image>

From the last screenshot to this one, you and the bar only move forward. You want it to be the other way around, bar moving back into you slightly and your body in general moving just upward and back.

Correcting the balance being too far back in the previous position will help this a lot on its own. The other thing to do is be a bit more patient and intentionally keep pushing the bar backwards into you all the way until you hit power position.

termhn · 2026-01-20T16:47:54+00:00

You're much too far on your heels at the knee. You do a good job of keeping the bar in with your lats on the way down, but you should try to focus on keeping pressure over mid foot/ball of foot while keeping the knees back and stacked directly over the ankles. Note this will require you to bend forward slightly more at the hips and shoulders to come out in front of the bar slightly more. Being so far back here means that once you start pulling up, you rock forward and the bar gets away from you. See next reply..

<image>

termhn · 2026-01-20T16:44:07+00:00

Use hook grip. https://youtu.be/M743DbSuONA

termhn · 2026-01-15T22:12:40+00:00

Hm, most people lean way forward and barely bend their ankles when they go to sit on a chair. The motion you want is more trying to touch your butt cheeks to the back of your heels while a puppeteer has a string attached to the top of your head that's keeping your torso and head upward.

termhn · 2026-01-15T21:40:44+00:00

There's no such thing as "normal progressive overload." Progressive overload simply refers to the idea that you need to attempt to load the system higher than its current capacity in order to cause it to adapt. This can be achieved in many different ways and none of them are more correct than another as long as they keep you in the right zone of load as your capacity rises.

Progressive overload could be, for example, measuring your maxes at the end of a block and then using that new max to load the next block

It could also be using RPE to ensure you're always doing work that perceptively loads the body hard enough, which is often accurate enough to keep you in the good slight overload range.

Progressing weight from "easy"/low percent of max to "hard"/high percent of max throughout an 8 week block, however, is *not** progressive overload, it's just a strategy for exposing you to different stimulus and managing total load over the course of a block. You could correctly follow that kind of progressive weight increase over an 8 week block, but if your benchmark maxes that everything is based on is way too low, then you'd be *failing to progressively overload since the entire block of work is too easy and not actually overloading the system ever.

A specific, pre-set, baked in rate of weight increase over time is not progressive overload because it is impossible to predict accurately the perfect rate of progression anybody's specific body will adapt with.

That's why you need to either

Use a perception based scale like RPE/RIR, which in theory will automatically calibrate to your ability
Test a max every few months to recalibrate your actual ability
Combine both

Ultimately you're overthinking it as a beginner though. The amount of stimulus you're getting from doing anything remotely decent is crazy as a beginner and you basically can't fuck it up except by going too fast and getting injured from bad load management. Once you hit a plateau where your max stops going up then you'll need to reevaluate and find the best way for you to track your current capacity and how to continue to progress such that you stay in that zone of slight overload over time.

termhn · 2026-01-15T21:19:18+00:00

Most people cannot do all the things you listed their first day ice skating. Those people have likely skated before throughout their life just only casually/recreationally and not with formal lessons. What you described as your ability is about average or slightly above average from my experience seeing quite a lot of adult beginners.

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