Archive - Confessions of a Code Addict

Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()

Discover why 'if not mylist' is twice as fast as 'len(mylist) == 0' by examining CPython's VM instructions and object memory access patterns.

22 hrs ago •

Abhinav Upadhyay

February 2025

January 2025

A Software Engineer's Guide to Reading Research Papers

My personal framework for reading research papers.

Jan 28 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

Launching Live Courses on Systems Programming

Modern software development has created a paradox: we build increasingly complex systems, yet fewer engineers understand how these systems work under…

Jan 25 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

Linux Context Switches: The Truth About TLB Flushes

Watch now (22 mins) | Is the TLB really flushed during context switches?

Jan 17 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

21:34

Live Session: How Modern CPUs Execute Your Code: A Deep Dive into Performance

I hope you enjoyed the recent article on how Unix spell was designed to lookup a 250kB dictionary on a 64kB machine. Writing it wore me down.

Jan 14 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

How Unix Spell Ran in 64kB RAM

How do you fit a dictionary in 64kb RAM? Unix engineers solved it with clever data structures and compression tricks. Here's the fascinating story…

Jan 12 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

December 2024

Linux Context Switching Internals: Part 1 - Process State and Memory

How does the Linux kernel represent processes and their state: A breakdown of task_struct and mm_struct

Dec 29, 2024 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

Reflections on 2024 and Exciting Plans for 2025

Looking back at what we accomplished in 2024, and plans for 2025

Dec 18, 2024 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

Recording: Live Coding a Bytecode Compiler for Python

Yesterday we concluded the live session on live coding a bytecode compiler and interpreter (VM) for a tiny subset of Python in Python. Even though I…

Dec 15, 2024 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

2:57:12

Context Switching and Performance: What Every Developer Should Know

Understand how context switching affects CPU registers, caches, TLB, and pipeline performance, and learn strategies to mitigate performance penalties

Dec 12, 2024 •

Abhinav Upadhyay

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