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Canada suspends trade negotiations with USA and match tariffs dollar for dollar

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2026/08/21/statement-prime-minister-carney-canada-us-trad...
354•backlit4034•2h ago•224 comments

Munder Difflin – Agent harness to run an office of your clones

https://munderdiffl.in/
52•simonpure•2h ago•19 comments

Z80–The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive

https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/mi/2021/06/09623402/1yJTvlRLmhi
36•asdefghyk•2h ago•17 comments

Rust Glancer: Rust LSP using 100x less RAM

https://rust-glancer.github.io/blog/hello-world/
301•matklad•16h ago•58 comments

Felony Bench

https://www.felonybench.com/
752•colinprince•21h ago•281 comments

Kobo can run apps now

https://bandarlabs.github.io/Cobalt/
584•thepoet•20h ago•191 comments

Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/politics/samuel-tunick-deleted-phone-felony.html
859•floathub•1d ago•984 comments

There's no reason for software to be slow anymore

https://danluu.com/perf-opt/
486•Jach•11h ago•336 comments

I accidentally logged hundreds of thousands of phone calls to military bases

https://lina.sh/blog/hijacking-e164-arpa
582•gavide•23h ago•71 comments

Zig’s io.threaded is neat

https://matklad.github.io/2026/08/06/neat-io-threaded.html
95•chilipepperhott•22h ago•50 comments

Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/22/meta-trial-children-privacy
9•sbulaev•38m ago•1 comments

Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results

https://kagi.com/changelog#11296
1165•speckx•22h ago•370 comments

Three important steps in my maturation process

https://thomasdullien.github.io/posts/2026-08-21-three-important-steps-in-my-maturation-process/
166•tdullien•14h ago•77 comments

Stop Making TUIs

https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2026/08/20/stop-making-tuis/
192•underdeserver•1d ago•277 comments

OTel isn’t going well

https://matduggan.com/otel-isnt-going-well-and-i-made-a-spreadsheet-about-it/
146•hn_acker•19h ago•59 comments

Scientists release biggest 2D map of the universe

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2026/08/10/scientists-release-biggest-2d-map-of-the-universe/
218•NKosmatos•18h ago•57 comments

Galactic Compass 2: now with new augmented reality mode

https://interconnected.org/home/2026/08/21/galactic
17•bobbiechen•19h ago•2 comments

AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/08/18/does-ai-stop-children-from-learning
323•dash2•3d ago•330 comments

Optimizing meshoptimizer to process billions of triangles in minutes (2025)

https://zeux.io/2025/09/30/billions-of-triangles-in-minutes/
48•corysama•18h ago•0 comments

How Thailand Resisted Colonization

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-thailand-resisted-colonization/
39•karakoram•18h ago•10 comments

Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article

https://github.com/adnanakil/nobuzz/blob/main/README.md
302•aakil•22h ago•194 comments

I'm becoming AI-blind

https://cymerys.com/w/im-becoming-ai-blind
406•rcymerys•1d ago•415 comments

People of ACM – Russ Cox

https://www.acm.org/articles/people-of-acm/2026/russ-cox
144•signa11•5d ago•14 comments

New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson

https://precastreinforced.co.uk/2026/08/16/new-worlds/
256•speckx•23h ago•166 comments

Early-life stress leaves a 'scar' inside brain cells in mice

https://medicine.washu.edu/news/how-early-life-stress-leaves-a-scar-inside-brain-cells/
97•gmays•1d ago•46 comments

Everyone says assembly is untyped—everyone is wrong

https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2026/08/20/designing-odins-inline-asm/
99•adamrezich•1d ago•43 comments

A revisit of remote Spectre attacks on Cloudflare Workers

https://blog.cloudflare.com/revisiting-spectre-attacks-on-workers/
61•albertpedersen•2d ago•1 comments

HN: The Good Parts (2016)

https://danluu.com/hn-comments/
62•adletbalzhanov•12h ago•11 comments

The coolest anti-surveillance tools at Defcon [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2uAsJ5EPAw
214•neom•3d ago•36 comments

How we made a text-to-speech model respond in sub-50 ms

https://nari-labs.com/blog/qwen3-tts-speed-cost-frontier/
157•toebee•20h ago•38 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.