frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Which function definition keyword do you prefer, def or fn?

1•winwang•1y ago
I'm curious about what people think of `def` vs `fn`, two short keywords for starting function definitions.

...Or maybe we should subscribe to the church of `df`, haha.

Comments

sitkack•1y ago
def could be for lots of things, fn is for functions. I don't think it matters much as long as you have one. C would have been so much easier to parse. Just copy Zig or Rust.
butlersean•1y ago
def means define, could be used to define all kinds of things

fn isnt a legitimate short form of function

fun doesnt work because of the amusement factor

func is the only alternative we have left

sitkack•1y ago
How about unicode or emojis?

These don't have the full fidelity as hn scrubs emojis

add = (a, b) -> a + b

a, b ⟹ a + b

λ add(a, b): ↪ a + b

johncoltrane•1y ago
"def" is too generic.

"fn" is too cryptic.

"function" is better than the two.

MultifokalHirn•1y ago
Agreed

The Age of Average

https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average
1•dwrodri•38s ago•0 comments

Show HN: Schist – the open source photo editor that feels nice to use

https://schist.app/
1•astrid__•1m ago•0 comments

Study: Blue light impairs the eye's ability to distinguish fine detail most

https://research.uga.edu/news/blue-light-has-a-surprising-effect-on-your-eyes-study-finds/
1•giuliomagnifico•1m ago•0 comments

Advanced AI threatens global financial stability, says Bank of England boss

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/31/advanced-frontier-ai-financial-stability-andrew-...
2•theanonymousone•5m ago•0 comments

How to Build Open Source for AI Agents

https://agentledco.substack.com/p/how-to-build-open-source-for-ai-agents
1•hsantana8•6m ago•0 comments

How an MIT research project became a global programming language

https://news.mit.edu/2026/how-mit-research-project-became-global-programming-language-0831
1•theanonymousone•8m ago•0 comments

The Hedgehog and the Fox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox
1•dcminter•9m ago•0 comments

Sampling hard [quantum] circuits with verifiably high fidelity

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.25941
1•thebeardisred•10m ago•0 comments

Peekl: An Alternative to Puppet and Ansible

https://peekl.dev/
1•redat00•11m ago•1 comments

If you work in software company, then you must be making Windows, Mouse Keyboard

https://medium.com/@gurvinder372/if-you-work-in-a-software-company-then-you-must-be-making-window...
1•gps372•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sonde, a local code graph for AI agents that refuses to guess

https://github.com/anishmoncivarghese/sonde
1•anishvarghese•13m ago•0 comments

Soundwise.ai: Free AI Transcription That Respects Your Privacy

https://soundwise.ai
1•ShawnaWang•15m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Are Prompt Injections "Malware"?

1•razorbeamz•17m ago•3 comments

KDE for Digital Sovereignty

https://kde.org/for/digital-sovereignty/
1•ognarb•19m ago•0 comments

ReactOS 0.4.16

https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-0416-released/
1•marttt•20m ago•0 comments

IST as common time reference across the country

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2304613&reg=48&lang=2
1•cyb0rg0•22m ago•0 comments

Attestation-Gated Key Release for Confidential Computing Workloads

https://confidential.ai/blog/attested-key-release
1•h0h0h0h0111•24m ago•1 comments

Two More Things

https://medium.com/@caseyspain/two-more-things-3cae579acaac
1•beauregardener•25m ago•0 comments

South Korea's 'AI for All' Push Gives Free Access to Every Citizen

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/south-koreas-ai-for-all-push-gives-free-access-to-every-citizen-451f6b2c
1•BearBest•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Live, step-through diagram embeds for Confluence

https://flostep.dev/blog/documentation-diagrams-already-out-of-date
1•pandurang90•26m ago•0 comments

Sliding-window beats linear attention

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28444
1•sbulaev•27m ago•0 comments

I built a local citation checker and caught papers citing wrong ArXiv IDs

https://strictcite.com/
1•Tughan•27m ago•0 comments

Why We're Teaching Programming Wrong: A Haskell Perspective [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV9UMNOTvN0
1•markusschlegel•27m ago•0 comments

Planetary prediction engine: Automating global models via Earth AI

https://research.google/blog/planetary-prediction-engine-automating-global-models-via-earth-ai/
1•geox•29m ago•0 comments

I was wrong about MCPs

https://mega.dev/wrong-about-mcps
3•overment•29m ago•0 comments

Photo-to-anime tools still feel stuck between"filterapps"and"prompt engineering"

https://animephotogen.com/
1•LumisYY•34m ago•0 comments

Anybuild

https://www.anybuild.run
1•jedisct1•35m ago•0 comments

The Starfish and the Spider [pdf]

https://earthprayer.net/library/Starfish-and-Spider-Ori-Brafman-Summary.pdf
1•rzk•37m ago•0 comments

Claude weekly limit for "20x" plan is 10x; 20x applying to 5h limits

https://twitter.com/thsottiaux/status/2094254532020818191
3•m101•39m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is Rust is a real niche programming language?

2•juntz•41m ago•0 comments