Reading and writing are less symmetric than you (probably) think
0 comments
- Points88
- Comments23
–Rank now
#11Peak rank
2Days on list
–Score · 7d
Oct 31, 2026First seen
On Hacker News
- Points
- 88
- Comments
- 23
- Submitted by
- luu
- Posted
- Oct 28, 2026
- Site
- fgiesen.wordpress.com
Story details from Hacker News ↗ · linked article on fgiesen.wordpress.com.
Trending history
Reading and writing are less symmetric than you (probably) think was first seen on Hacker News · Front page on Oct 31, 2026. Since then it has appeared in 78 checks on 2 different days. Its best position was #11 of 30, reached on Nov 1, 04:07 UTC. It dropped off the list after Nov 1, 10:52 UTC.
Rank history
Position on Hacker News · Front page at every check (lower is better).
Last 14 days
Best rank per day (UTC).
12
11
Oct 26today
Metric history
Platform metric as reported by Hacker News.
From the discussion
A few top-level comments from Hacker News, shortened. Read the full thread on Hacker News.
Great article :D The rabbithole actually goes even deeper because buffering on the read side is almost always good, but reads are often way more latency-sensitive than writes. Which leads to the paradox that increasing the buffer size / prefetching more with mmapping can lead to worse performance due to the added…
oh i thought this would be about language and how the brain works, that article sounds more interesting to be honest sorry
This is true even at the CPU cache level so it's probably going to trickle down all the way. For example Jon G gave a talk at Jane Street about how he had a mysterious performance bug that was later attributed to cores fighting over the same cache line https://youtu.be/tND-wBBZ8RY?is=624w3YoDN2QYBWuD
Featured in
Archived daily, weekly and monthly lists that include this entry.
Hacker News 2 days, best #11
Questions
Is Reading and writing are less symmetric than you (probably) think trending on Hacker News right now?
Not at the moment. It was last on the list on Nov 1, 10:52 UTC, after 2 days of trending.
What is the highest rank Reading and writing are less symmetric than you (probably) think reached?
#11 on Hacker News · Front page, on Nov 1, 04:07 UTC. Trendoday checks this list every 15 minutes.
How long has Reading and writing are less symmetric than you (probably) think been trending?
It was first seen on Oct 31, 2026 and has been on the list on 2 days (78 checks) since.
How much discussion did it get on Hacker News?
88 points and 23 comments; submitted by luu on Oct 28, 2026.