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Things to know when you get cancer

https://jjmaxwell4.com/writing/things-to-know-when-you-get-cancer/
1299•jjmaxwell4•13h ago•321 comments

Wanted to download an ISO, ended up writing a kernel exploit

https://blog.dfb.sh/blog/eap770-root-for-two-zeros/
45•0xdeafbeef•1d ago•18 comments

Creating a Garmin "MCP"

https://jackantico.io/garmin-mcp
21•ricotico060•1d ago•18 comments

OpenCode 2.0

https://anoma.ly/notes/opencode-2-0/
583•gmays•11h ago•225 comments

Tiny Little Office

https://tinylittleoffice.com/
399•donohoe•10h ago•60 comments

LFM2.5-24B-A2B: Built for fast on-device agents

https://www.liquid.ai/blog/lfm2-5-24b-a2b
200•gmays•8h ago•44 comments

Do dentists know what they're doing?

https://mapwriting.substack.com/p/dentists
669•doitLP•3d ago•480 comments

Show HN: Indigene – Native plants for where you stand

https://indigene.app/
13•olivierlacan•2d ago•1 comments

Catch a Bird – I made it for my own sanity

https://catchabird.com
148•eduardsik•2d ago•33 comments

Americans' social activity has steeply declined in the past 30 years

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/9/29/americans-social-activity-has-steeply-declined-in-...
383•hubraumhugo•16h ago•359 comments

Donaldson Futuro House in Idyllwild, California, USA

https://www.wowhaus.co.uk/2026/10/12/donaldson-futuro-house-in-idyllwild-california-usa/
43•rmason•1d ago•14 comments

It took me nine years to hack my Xbox 360

https://kennedn.com/blog/posts/glitching/
77•kennedn•1d ago•18 comments

Aidlc: Adaptive workflow steering rules for AI coding agents

https://github.com/awslabs/aidlc-workflows
4•pramodbiligiri•1h ago•0 comments

The Toftwood Male Voice Choir: A Mystery Pressed in Vinyl

https://ei3lh.eu/2026/10/11/the-toftwood-male-voice-choir-a-mystery-pressed-in-vinyl/
33•austinallegro•3d ago•1 comments

Sticky alpine flower confirms Darwin's 150-year-old carnivorous plant prediction

https://phys.org/news/2026-08-sticky-alpine-darwin-year-carnivorous.html
20•maxall4•2d ago•6 comments

The Double Headed Stack Allocator

https://blog.demofox.org/2026/10/03/the-double-headed-stack-allocator/
61•g0xA52A2A•6h ago•15 comments

Better HTTP/1 connection reuse in Go 1.27

https://go.dev/blog/http-connection-reuse
249•allddd•16h ago•36 comments

Your C is not standard C

https://sebsite.pw/w/20261012-notstdc.html
82•dverlaeckt80•1d ago•46 comments

Show HN: Ito – Build Terminal UIs in Lua

https://uji.sh/ito/
15•cat-whisperer•10h ago•4 comments

David Rudnick on "borderline impossible" process of designing Arsenal typeface

https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/david-rudnick-johnnie-campbell-arsenal-rocastle-typeface-gra...
20•droidjj•2d ago•5 comments

Show HN: Flipflop, Iroh-powered persistent tunnels for filesharing

https://github.com/andunieee/flipflop
30•andunie•4h ago•10 comments

Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?

https://alexwennerberg.com/blog/2026-10-13-long.html
342•epestr•1d ago•284 comments

We’re releasing Jev 1.14.0 along with experimental features for dreamers

https://typesafe.ai/blog/jev-1-14
280•emschwartz•11h ago•90 comments

Show HN: Petal, open-source CoScreen/ScreenHero finally free

https://petal.live/
162•thedracle•14h ago•38 comments

Containment and monitoring failures are to blame for AI hacking reports: experts

https://www.csoonline.com/article/4234854/ai-agents-arent-going-rogue-frontier-labs-are-skipping-...
890•latexr•15h ago•522 comments

AI was great until it was not

https://thetheorygirlie.substack.com/p/ai-was-great-until-it-was-not
5•JohnHammersley•29m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: CAD for wood working with LLM support?

71•reacharavindh•2d ago•62 comments

How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet

https://www.not-ship.com/how-amazon-pushes-up-prices-all-across-the-internet/
819•sighborg•23h ago•637 comments

Fancy Curl Sites

https://nytpu.com/gemlog/2026-03-18
126•adunk•13h ago•24 comments

Phloem: Git history grown like a slime mold

https://phloem.stemdeck.app/
113•thclpr•2d ago•22 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.