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Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Francis Halzen

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2026/
60•solarist•48m ago•10 comments

Beam: Reflection's 501B open-weight model

https://reflection.ai/blog/introducing-beam
462•Philpax•15h ago•148 comments

Accountability mechanisms can be joyful (2024)

https://liquidbrain.net/blog/accountability-and-joy/
43•luu•2d ago•10 comments

Find the flattest route between any two points in SF

https://flattensf.com/
210•ishan0102•12h ago•74 comments

Dust: Pretraining Transformers Without Backpropagation

https://qlabs.sh/research/dust
202•E-Reverance•13h ago•49 comments

Friendship ended with Deno, now Node is my best friend

https://dbushell.com/2026/10/03/deno-to-node/
175•ibobev•12h ago•102 comments

Opus 5.5 agents discover two room-temperature magnetic semiconductor candidates

https://www.vals.ai/blogs/room-temperature-magnetic-semiconductors
361•outlier99•13h ago•243 comments

Web Search API

https://developers.cloudflare.com/changelog/post/2026-10-02-introducing-web-search-api/
551•tosh•23h ago•248 comments

Resurrecting iChat Audio and Video Conferencing

https://blog.pipetogrep.org/2026/09/11/resurrecting-ichat-audio-and-video-conferencing/
52•thepipetogrep•6h ago•12 comments

Example.com just launched the biggest redesign in decades

https://www.debugbear.com/blog/example-dot-com-redesign-history
230•jgx0•11h ago•149 comments

An algorithmic failure beneath the secret ballot

https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2026/08/03/an-algorithmic-failure-beneath-the-secret-ballot/
86•leecoursey•2d ago•57 comments

Testing 12 different Zigbee temperature/humidity sensors

https://smarthomescene.com/reviews/best-selling-zigbee-temperature-sensors-tested/
118•walrus01•2d ago•59 comments

Competitive Programmer's Handbook (2018) [pdf]

https://cses.fi/book/book.pdf
211•vinhnx•2d ago•51 comments

Anthropic Subscriptions Offer 5x+ More Value Than OpenAI

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-subscriptions-offer-5x
43•nsoonhui•3h ago•34 comments

The complement of true is true, except when it's false

https://dryperspective.github.io/posts/complement-of-true/
21•aw1621107•1d ago•1 comments

Global Solar Atlas: summary of solar power potential globally

https://globalsolaratlas.info/
57•stratts•11h ago•37 comments

Why Common Lisp is now the best programming language

https://www.vivienhenz.com/common-lisp
196•misterchocolat•7h ago•235 comments

Using A.I. and machine learning to decode communication of sperm whales

https://blue-continuum.com/the-man-who-listens-to-whales
26•dnetesn•2d ago•16 comments

Gleam doesn't compile to Erlang source anymore

https://gleam.run/news/gleam-doesnt-compile-to-erlang-source-anymore/
4•ingve•2h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Entombed in a Raycaster

https://www.stelabouras.com/blog/entombed-raycaster/
25•stelabouras•2d ago•5 comments

Show HN: Photoc – Command-line tools for photographers

https://github.com/ahmetomerv/photoc
38•ahmetomer•2d ago•5 comments

ChatGPT is adding real cartoonists' signatures to fake New Yorker cartoons

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/chatgpt-is-adding-real-cartoonists-signatures-to-fake-new-yorke...
450•rdmuser•11h ago•320 comments

The lamps in my house

https://arslan.io/2026/10/05/the-lamps-in-my-house/
213•farslan•20h ago•92 comments

Ephemeral Testing

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/10/05/ephemeral-testing/
64•ibobev•11h ago•19 comments

Samon: Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle

https://gwern.net/doc/design/2026-10-03-gwern-samon.html
46•networked•11h ago•21 comments

DEDA – Tracking Dots Extraction, Decoding and Anonymisation Toolkit

https://github.com/dfd-tud/deda
65•greyface-•1d ago•7 comments

Apple and a hacker's future

https://stratechery.com/2026/apple-and-a-hackers-future/
261•maguay•1d ago•221 comments

Making a GTK application in Haskell, part 1

https://floreal.tech/blog/2026/making-a-gtk-app-in-haskell-part-1/
159•Vosporos•20h ago•44 comments

Qualcomm licenses patents on Huawei’s LogicFolding chip tech

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-05/qualcomm-licenses-patents-on-huawei-s-logicfol...
193•0xedb•1d ago•125 comments

Fundamentals of circadian entrainment by light (2021)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14771535211014792
5•NaOH•1d ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Extending a Language – Writing Powerful Macros in Scheme

https://mnieper.github.io/scheme-macros/README.html
92•textread•1y ago

Comments

neilv•1y ago
A few formatting changes might make this advanced example easier to understand:

    (define-syntax trace-let
      (syntax-rules ()
        [(trace-let name ([var expr] ...) body1 ... body2)
         (let f ([depth 0] [var expr] ...)
           (define name
             (lambda (var ...)
               (f (+ depth 1) var ...)))
           (indent depth)
           (display "(")
           (display 'name)
           (begin
             (display " ")
             (display var))
           ...
           (display ")")
           (newline)
           (call-with-values
               (lambda ()
                 body1 ... body2)
             (lambda val*
               (indent depth)
               (fold-left
                (lambda (sep val)
                  (display sep)
                  (display val)
                  " ")
                "" val*)
               (newline)
               (apply values val*))))]))
The biggest one is to make the rule template pattern variables all-uppercase. I also made a few other tweaks, including using indentation a little more, and naming the named-`let` variable as "loop" (I usually name it `loop` or prefix the name with `loop-` if there's more than one):

    (define-syntax trace-let
      (syntax-rules ()
        ((trace-let NAME ((VAR EXPR) ...) BODY1 ... BODY2)
         (let loop ((depth 0)
                    (VAR   EXPR) ...)
           (define NAME
             (lambda (VAR ...)
               (loop (+ depth 1) VAR ...)))
           (indent depth)
           (display "(")
           (display (quote NAME))
           (begin (display " ")
                  (display VAR)) ...
           (display ")")
           (newline)
           (call-with-values (lambda ()
                               BODY1 ... BODY2)
             (lambda val*
               (indent depth)
               (fold-left (lambda (sep val)
                            (display sep)
                            (display val)
                            " ")
                          ""
                          val*)
               (newline)
               (apply values val*)))))))
Incidentally, all-uppercase Scheme pattern variables is one of the all-time best uses of all-uppercase in any language. Second only to all-uppercase for the C preprocessor, where a preprocessor macro can introduce almost arbitrary text. Using all-uppercase for constants in some language that has constants, however, is an abomination.

(My suspicion of why Java did all-caps is that they were developing a language for embedded systems developers who were currently using C and C++, and they wanted to make it superficially look similar, even though it was an entirely different language. And then, ironically, the language ended up being used mostly by the analogue of a very different developer of the time: corporate internal information systems developers, who, as a field, didn't use anything like C. It's too late to save Java, but to all other language and API developers, please stop the insanity of all-caps constants, enum values, etc. It's not the most important thing that needs to jump out from the code above all other things.)

Y_Y•1y ago
FWIW, all-caps makes this look much worse to me. I understand that people like things like Hungarian notation, arrows over vector names, and shouting Common Lisp symbols. I understand the argument that it can make reading easier. I just can't appreciate that benefit, and it seems to me an ugly hack which obscures the abstract and general symbolic manipulation going on.

This is all highly subjective of course, de gustibus non disputandem.

neilv•1y ago
You mean aesthetically, in that interspersed all-caps makes the code visually less soothingly sensual?

I can sympathize, but let me make a non-aesthetic argument...

In large blocks of code, with all-caps, you can see at a glance where all the template substitutions are happening, and also instantly know as you're reading code what are variables and what are template substitutions?

I'm asking because one of my realizations in recent years is that not everyone reads or sees code the same way.

For example, maybe some people are stronger "visual" and some people are stronger "verbal".

For another example of a different in how people perceive and think, some people can visualize an object in their mind almost as if they're looking at it, but other people can only know and describe what it looks like without bringing a visual of it into their head.

With the benefit of the all-caps, I can glance at this and immediately see much of the structure of the template. Without all-caps, I'd have to work harder to find all the pattern variables, and the structure would be obscured.

For a bit kludgy practical matter, as I'm quickly looking at pieces of code in a template, with all-caps, I can look at a fragment of code in isolation and know what are and aren't pattern variables. Without that, I have to go read the top of the template clause (and read through any syntactic scopes of `let-syntax`) and get that in my head, until I get to the fragment of code I originally wanted to look at.

IDE support can make this unnecessary, with a hypothetical great IDE, with familiar syntax coloring. But still, if there is one thing that all-caps should be reserved for, it's something like this.

With all-caps, your code can be sensual, and the jolting all-caps bits are look out, potentially arbitrary code gets pasted into here.

mnemenaut•1y ago
https://github.com/rogerturner/scheme-macros/blob/main/examp... shows stepwise development of a trace-let [the `(example: (fn arg) => result)` forms are tests - see check-examples library]
Y_Y
•
1y ago
Since you asked, my objection is both aesthetic and semantic, though I was really referring to the semantic part above.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with this visual vs. verbal distinction.

I can add a few clarifying details. I don't use IDEs as much as basic text editors maybe with highlighting, and I try not to rely on any fancy features. It does worry me that the allcaps use you describe is (afaik) not known to the editor or interpreter, so if you make a mistake or the symbol gets out of sync with its meaning (re: pattern variables) you may have a false signal. Finally I'll say that in the end I can't suggest a good way to treat these special variables, and so maybe I don't get it, or tastes like mine would be better served by a different formalism for macros.