frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

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

1•winwang•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo ago
"def" is too generic.

"fn" is too cryptic.

"function" is better than the two.

MultifokalHirn•9mo ago
Agreed

Lines of Code Are Back (and It's Worse Than Before)

https://www.thepragmaticcto.com/p/lines-of-code-are-back-and-its-worse
1•birdculture•31s ago•0 comments

Hunter-gatherers took refuge in European 'water world' for millennia

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00440-z
1•Brajeshwar•1m ago•0 comments

Why Does Dial Up Sounds Like That? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dEXAgLjbcMw
1•avonmach•1m ago•0 comments

Recent Tropical Cyclone Outer Size Increases in the Western North Atlantic

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025EF007162
1•bikenaga•1m ago•0 comments

Robots with human-inspired eyes have better vision

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/02/11/robots-with-human-inspired-eyes-have-...
1•Brajeshwar•1m ago•0 comments

Humans are not the only animals that treat each other's injuries

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/02/11/humans-are-not-the-only-animals-that-...
1•Brajeshwar•1m ago•0 comments

Ruby on Rails doesn't use CSRF tokens anymore

https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/56350
1•Einenlum•1m ago•0 comments

SpaceX takes down Dragon crew arm, giving Starship a leg up in Florida

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/heres-why-americas-most-historic-launch-pad-is-getting-yet-...
1•voxadam•1m ago•0 comments

Mewgenics Wiki, Breeding Guide and Class Database

https://mewgenics.online/
1•lizbo•1m ago•0 comments

US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

https://www.ft.com/content/c4f886a1-1633-418c-b6b5-16f700f8bb0d
1•mraniki•3m ago•1 comments

Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/12/elon-musk-posts-january-white-supremacists
1•n1b0m•4m ago•0 comments

U.S. Health Officials Defend Rejection of Moderna's Flu Vaccine

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/health/fda-moderna-flu-vaccine.html
1•whack•4m ago•0 comments

Uber's Rate Limiting System

https://www.uber.com/blog/ubers-rate-limiting-system/
1•enz•6m ago•0 comments

Continuous Tensors

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3763146
2•tesserato•6m ago•1 comments

Republicans vote to end Trump's Canada tariffs

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/cnbc-daily-open-republicans-vote-to-end-trumps-canada-tariffs-in-...
2•leopoldj•6m ago•0 comments

What the FDA's 2026 Update Means for Wearables

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fda-medical-device-rules
1•oldnetguy•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Production-Ready Django and React Auth Starter

https://github.com/maniishbhusal/django-react-auth-starter
1•okchildhood•7m ago•0 comments

Russia bans WhatsApp, pushes state-backed alternative "MAX"

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/12/russia-bans-whatsapp-pushes-state-backed-alternative-max
1•fsdakhsdkjhask•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Quoracle, a recursive consensus-based multi-agent orchestrator (Elixir)

https://github.com/shelvick/quoracle
1•shelvick•9m ago•1 comments

Making the Vortex Mixer

https://www.asimov.press/p/vortex
1•mailyk•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Drift – Real-time codebase health dashboard with AI-powered fixing (Go)

https://drift.marquis.codes/
1•greatnessinabox•10m ago•0 comments

I built a zero-noise AI code review agent using Claude Code

https://medium.com/riskified-technology/lgtm-2-0-zero-noise-ai-code-review-agents-857441ec4f1a
4•aner-co•10m ago•1 comments

If SEO is rocket science, AI SEO is astrophysics

https://searchengineland.com/seo-rocket-science-ai-seo-astrophysics-468923
1•speckx•11m ago•1 comments

What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/16/what-is-claude-anthropic-doesnt-know-either
2•jbegley•11m ago•1 comments

Texas Lawmakers Sound Alarm on 'Torture, Killing, and Inhumane Treatment'

https://www.commondreams.org/news/fort-bliss-inhumane-ice-conditions
1•wahnfrieden•11m ago•0 comments

Finding the Active Voice

https://elijahpotter.dev/articles/finding-the-active-voice
1•chilipepperhott•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: The Algorithm's Favorite Child – A social experiment

https://chatbotkit.com/hub/blueprints/the-algorithms-favorite-child
1•_pdp_•11m ago•0 comments

OpenClaw Partners with VirusTotal for Skill Security

https://openclaw.ai/blog/virustotal-partnership
2•sulongbin•12m ago•0 comments

Are F-35s Being Delivered to the USAF Without Radars? Sure Seems Like It

https://www.twz.com/air/are-f-35s-being-delivered-to-the-usaf-without-radars-sure-seems-like-it
2•Analemma_•12m ago•0 comments

The $285B 'SaaSpocalypse' Is the Wrong Panic

https://www.decodingdiscontinuity.com/p/285-billion-saaspocalypse-wrong-panic
1•dmk•13m ago•0 comments