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Writing by hand is good for your brain

https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/writing-by-hand-is-good-for-your
571•dwwoelfel•4h ago•279 comments

What happened to TheNumbers.com

https://stephenfollows.com/p/what-just-happened-to-thenumberscom-should-worry-us-all
133•nickthegreek•2h ago•41 comments

Building on ATProto

https://lukekanies.com/writing/building-on-atproto/
30•speckx•41m ago•5 comments

Software rendering in 500 lines of bare C++

https://haqr.eu/tinyrenderer/
166•mpweiher•4h ago•29 comments

Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/22/startup-founders-urge-trump-not-to-shut-off-chinese-open...
431•theanonymousone•3h ago•443 comments

Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

https://learnopengl.com/
108•ibobev•4h ago•56 comments

Why Software Factories Fail (or: harness engineering is not enough)

https://github.com/humanlayer/advanced-context-engineering-for-coding-agents/blob/main/wsff.md
70•dhorthy•3h ago•50 comments

Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2610/
152•MarcoDewey•5h ago•56 comments

Launch HN: Screenpipe (YC S26) – Power your agents by your 24/7 screen recording

27•louis030195•2h ago•25 comments

A solid-state “atomic channel” for separating rare earth elements

https://pme.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/cleaner-route-purifying-rare-earth-elements
9•MarcoDewey•52m ago•0 comments

The arguments against open source AI are bad

https://tombedor.dev/arguments-against-open-source-ai-are-very-bad/
68•jjfoooo4•2h ago•35 comments

Show HN: Palmier Pro – Open-source macOS video editor built for AI

https://github.com/palmier-io/palmier-pro
42•harrisontin•3h ago•12 comments

Geekbench 7

https://www.geekbench.com/blog/2026/07/geekbench-7/
14•ilreb•53m ago•5 comments

JEP 540: Simple JSON API (Now in Incubator)

https://openjdk.org/jeps/540
57•theanonymousone•3h ago•40 comments

Learn WebGPU for C++

https://eliemichel.github.io/LearnWebGPU/
44•ibobev•4h ago•8 comments

Show HN: OneCLI – OSS credential gateway that keeps secrets out of AI agents

https://github.com/onecli/onecli
39•Jonathanfishner•3h ago•17 comments

From Evaluation to Guardrails: What We Brought to ACM FAccT 2026

https://blog.mozilla.ai/from-evaluation-to-guardrails-what-we-brought-to-acm-facct-2026/
5•royapakzad•36m ago•0 comments

Free way to get your data out of ChatGPT Business accounts

https://github.com/Conradqh/scrapemychats
53•conradqh•3h ago•4 comments

Hybrid-Electric Aicraft Engine Targeting 30% Fuel Efficiency

https://www.rtx.com/news/news-center/2026/07/21/rtxs-pratt-whitney-canada-advances-hybrid-electri...
63•r2sk5t•4h ago•43 comments

DARPA, U.S. Air Force fly AI-controlled F-16

https://www.darpa.mil/news/2026/darpa-us-air-force-fly-ai-controlled-f-16
65•r2sk5t•5h ago•61 comments

Show HN: Remux – an open-source tmux workspace designed for iPhone

https://github.com/h3nock/remux
58•bitwise42•4h ago•18 comments

AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-hide-debt-off-balance-sheet
418•technewssss•5h ago•201 comments

OpenStreetMap: Admin_level for All Countries

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative#Table_:_Admin_level_for_all_cou...
70•ivanjermakov•4d ago•9 comments

Show HN: Claude-thermos – keeps your Claude session warm for you

https://github.com/izeigerman/claude-thermos
17•s0ck_r4w•1h ago•16 comments

Encryption and Globalization 15 Years Later: E2EE and the "Going Dark" Debate

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6959699
35•iamnothere•4h ago•15 comments

Emacs Is a Lispboard

https://en.andros.dev/blog/06bfd107/emacs-is-a-lispboard/
46•andros•5h ago•10 comments

Meta Garbage Collection: Using OCaml's GC to GC Rust

https://soteria-tools.com/blog/meta-garbage-collection
9•annieversary•3d ago•0 comments

Show HN: Whetuu – a zero-config cross-shell prompt written in Zig

https://yamafaktory.github.io/whetuu/
35•yamafaktory•4h ago•19 comments

Fields Medals 2026

https://www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/fields-medal/fields-medals-2026
53•nill0•4h ago•16 comments

What happens when the information runs out

https://blog.jimgrey.net/2026/06/30/what-happens-when-the-information-runs-out/
45•mooreds•5h ago•17 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.