frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Bug Blindness

https://danluu.com/bug-blind/
160•davidmckenna•5h ago•66 comments

Hy4 preview

https://www.tencent.com/tencent-releases-and-open-sources-tencent-hy4-preview/
250•shenli3514•10h ago•145 comments

RISC-V is now officially supported by CPython

https://blog.python.org/2026/08/riscv-now-officially-supported/
86•lumpa•5d ago•15 comments

FreeCORE TrueNAS Core – Continued

https://freecore.org/
64•sashk•4h ago•42 comments

Creating Teensy ELF Executables for Linux (Or, "Size Is Everything")

https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html
26•Bluestein•4d ago•3 comments

Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux

https://zackbartel.com/blog/2026/08/tether/
414•zackb•6d ago•165 comments

Benjamin Franklin's Alter Egos Gave Him the Most Freedom

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/among-all-great-things-benjamin-franklin-invented-discover...
34•cisc•4h ago•8 comments

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/
173•JumpCrisscross•14h ago•69 comments

Benchmarking Pocket-Scale Inference

https://artificialanalysis.ai/hardware-inference-stack/mobile-phones
19•sys42590•2d ago•1 comments

Lawmakers added $1 to car insurance policies. That money paid for Flock cameras

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/28/texas-flock-cameras-auto-insurance-fee-mvcpa-grants/
226•DeepLogin•6h ago•111 comments

Algorithmic rent-pricing litigation expands under new state and local laws

https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2026/08/algorithmic-rent-pricing-litigation-expands-under-new-st...
58•toomuchtodo•3h ago•23 comments

SQLite as a Document Database (2020)

https://dgl.cx/2020/06/sqlite-json-support
191•lioeters•5d ago•47 comments

Is it safe to call print in a Python signal handler?

https://iafisher.com/2026/08/sigprint
33•hellerve•3d ago•13 comments

Functional State Machines in Rust: Typestate and Newtype Patterns

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3830438.3830958
71•matt_d•10h ago•29 comments

California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-lawmakers-unanimously-pass-linux-exemption...
37•shscs911•2h ago•0 comments

Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role

https://tucker.wales/writing/bias-towards-action/
137•tuckerwales•12h ago•56 comments

EVE Online moves to Python 3

https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/the-move-to-python-3-begins
331•TylerJaacks•4d ago•178 comments

Glacier Mice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_mice
279•ostacke•5d ago•54 comments

Daycare Pseudoscience

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/daycare-pseudoscience/
20•surprisetalk•1d ago•1 comments

Domain-Driven Agents

https://coldtake.dev/blog/domain-driven-agents
71•AlarQ•10h ago•14 comments

The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/openai-huggingface
18•consumer451•6h ago•1 comments

Samsung's Processing-in-Memory (PIM)

https://chipsandcheese.com/p/hot-chips-2026-samsungs-processing
255•ingve•23h ago•97 comments

Open Oscar Server: open-source server compatible with AIM and ICQ clients

https://github.com/mk6i/open-oscar-server
17•gregsadetsky•5h ago•7 comments

Show HN: I missed the moving blocks, so I built a real Linux disk defragmenter

https://github.com/gbin/defragger
42•gbin•4d ago•33 comments

Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

https://newsletter.eng-leadership.com/p/good-culture-is-the-biggest-productivity
326•gpi•12h ago•76 comments

DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/29/trump-dhs-1509-summons-records-journalists-nonpro...
374•firefax•11h ago•69 comments

Boot a Virtual iPhone via Apple's Virtualization.framework

https://github.com/Lakr233/vphone-cli
394•hentrep•1d ago•106 comments

Recovering Corrupt Zip Files

https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/recovering-corrupt-zip-files-1895
52•AshleysBrain•3d ago•21 comments

Trees for a Changing Climate and Resilient Urban Forest (2022)

https://www.coolboulder.org/news/trees-for-a-changing-climate-resilient-urban-forest
46•mooreds•13h ago•5 comments

Sleepwalker: Passive Backdoor with Its Own Command Language

https://r136a1.dev/2026/08/24/sleepwalker-a-passive-backdoor-with-its-own-command-language/
67•defrost•5d ago•12 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.