Plurrrr

As a programmer, you use hash functions every day. They're used in databases to optimise queries, they're used in data structures to make things faster, they're used in security to keep data safe. Almost every interaction you have with technology will involve hash functions in one way or another.

Hash functions are foundational, and they are everywhere.

But what is a hash function, and how do they work?

It’s been nine whole years since PEP 484 landed and brought us types from on high. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move^[1]. Since then, people on the internet have been clamoring to find out: does this mean we can now compile Python to native code for more speed? It’s a totally reasonable question. It was one of my first questions when I first started working on Python compilers. So can we do it?

Quite possibly the best thing about the Nix ecosystem is that there's a small army of people hard at work improving Nixpkgs, the largest software package repository in existence and one of the most active repos on GitHub, every single day. Not only are they constantly adding brand new packages for stuff that you might want to use—over 80,000 packages and counting!—they're also updating existing packages, which sometimes even includes fixes for critical security vulnerabilities.

But to take full advantage of this steady drumbeat of progress, it's important that you follow some best practices. To help you adopt those practices, we at Determinate Systems have created a tool called Nix Flake Checker and we're excited to release it to the Nix community.