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The future of independence is interdependence

https://onlys.ky/independence-is-interdependence/
99•eustoria•3h ago•58 comments

Web Search API

https://developers.cloudflare.com/changelog/post/2026-10-02-introducing-web-search-api/
366•tosh•8h ago•178 comments

Questions for Believers in AI Consciousness

https://endsdontjustifythemeans.com/p/6-questions-for-believers-in-ai-consciousness
9•cobbzilla•17m ago•1 comments

Making a GTK application in Haskell, part 1

https://floreal.tech/blog/2026/making-a-gtk-app-in-haskell-part-1/
100•Vosporos•4h ago•17 comments

OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/05/openai-rogue-agent-activities-found-on-wikimedia-projects/
107•brokensegue•1h ago•70 comments

Denmark Data Breach Exposes 8.8M People's Personal Data

https://www.cpr.dk/cpr-nyt/nyhedsarkiv/2026/okt/omfattende-uautoriseret-adgang-til-borgeres-cpr-o...
412•clan•11h ago•301 comments

Show HN: Nightwatch – a Mac menu-bar app that tells you when tonight is clear

https://github.com/rsutcliffe/nightwatch
29•delphidolphin•1d ago•2 comments

US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/05/russia-lab-worker-possibly-dies-of-plague-siberia-q...
143•tosh•2h ago•112 comments

Mold Linker Version 3.0.0 Release – Rewritten in Rust

https://github.com/rui314/mold/releases/tag/v3.0.0
189•roflcopter69•8h ago•96 comments

Linux containers in 500 lines of code

https://blog.lizzie.io/linux-containers-in-500-loc.html
39•mkornaukhov•5h ago•7 comments

Huawei and Qualcomm announce broad patent license agreement

https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2026/10/qualcomm-broad-patent-agreement
155•0xedb•11h ago•92 comments

Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge

https://www.techspot.com/news/114091-florida-woman-used-claude-diary-anthropic-reported-shoot.html
247•emptybits•13h ago•198 comments

The technology to eradicate mosquito-borne disease exists

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/mosquitoes-are-a-choice/
188•benbreen•1d ago•141 comments

Differences Between `Foldl` and `Foldr`

https://blog.haskell.org/foldl-and-foldr/
111•signa11•4d ago•24 comments

The designer lamps in my house

https://arslan.io/2026/10/05/the-lamps-in-my-house/
39•farslan•5h ago•21 comments

Pixel 11 doesn't yet meet the GrapheneOS security standards and may be skipped

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/41564-pixel-11-doesnt-yet-meet-the-grapheneos-security-standards...
349•finnlab•6h ago•190 comments

2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Deisseroth, Hegemann, Nagel

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2026/summary/
71•lode•9h ago•36 comments

Beating the Compiler

https://www.mattkeeter.com/blog/2024-07-12-interpreter/
41•andsoitis•4d ago•29 comments

Greenvolt begins building 600 MW/2.4 GWh BESS in Poland

https://www.ess-news.com/2026/09/25/greenvolt-begins-building-600-mw-2-4-gwh-bess-in-poland/
10•msalsas•39m ago•5 comments

Hot Flashing Guide Rev. 2.0 (2004)

https://archive.techarp.com/showarticle504a.html?pgno=0
4•userbinator•2d ago•0 comments

Martian chaos terrain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_chaos_terrain
71•tiagod•3d ago•19 comments

Norway Eyes Partial Ban of Smart Glasses

https://www.barrons.com/news/norway-eyes-partial-ban-of-smart-glasses-e65dc239
12•pseudolus•1h ago•1 comments

In the wake of Tippett Studios’ closure, a digital archive appears online

https://filmstories.co.uk/news/tippett-studios-in-the-wake-of-its-closure-a-digital-archive-of-an...
227•rdmuser•22h ago•30 comments

Picard 3.0

https://blog.metabrainz.org/2026/10/04/picard-3-0-released/
95•Tomte•5h ago•37 comments

We ported the original Doom to SQL

https://cedardb.com/blog/sqldoom/
284•Vaslo•1d ago•43 comments

A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE

https://wieslawsoltes.github.io/VB6/
371•wiso•1d ago•126 comments

Mystery Function

https://codeset.ai/function
31•andre15silva•3d ago•5 comments

The Tao of Backup

http://www.taobackup.com/index.html
250•vntok•3d ago•100 comments

Type Safe Generic Data Structures in C

https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/typechecked-generic-c-data-structures/
119•AlexeyBrin•2d ago•81 comments

Our approach to EU text provenance rules

https://openai.com/index/eu-text-provenance/
42•tosh•3h ago•24 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.