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The problem is not the AI code, but nobody knows anything anymore

https://www.ssp.sh/brain/the-problem-is-not-the-ai-code-but-nobody-knows-anything-anymore/
214•zazuke•1h ago•122 comments

Pirating the Pirates

https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/pirating-the-pirates
71•piotrgrabowski•1h ago•12 comments

13 Months Sober (2025)

https://www.bobbytables.io/p/13-months-sober
27•btables•1h ago•13 comments

Hijacking the PS5's RTMP Stream

https://yashgarg.dev/posts/hijacking-ps5-rtmp-stream/
33•ibobev•1h ago•2 comments

Parley: Federated, decentralised chat that speaks plain IRC

https://git.mills.io/prologic/parley
233•davidcollantes•6h ago•111 comments

What Heraldry and Mon Can Teach Us About Building Visual-Identity Generators

https://benovermyer.com/blog/2026/09/japanese-vs-western-heraldry/
31•bovermyer•2h ago•9 comments

What makes Lisp difficult to read?

https://paultm.nl/paren-thesis
24•ibobev•2h ago•28 comments

Coding Is Not Solved

https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/coding-is-not-solved
286•firstSpeaker•3h ago•291 comments

37,500 border drawings: a map of the world as people remember it

https://www.habibicode.org/thedrawnworld
133•nicocarsui•8h ago•31 comments

Show HN: PaperMono, e-ink fridge magnet shopping list with mobile web page

https://github.com/seamusc/papermono-shopping-list
79•seamus_c•7h ago•32 comments

Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/897/transcript
93•simonpure•1h ago•63 comments

What Would a Serious AI Product Look Like?

https://blog.glyph.im/2026/09/serious-ai-product.html
40•lumpa•6h ago•15 comments

Footguns with Postgres "at time zone 'UTC'"

https://bookofrevenue.com/blog/6ab81e9a97a13f0001f7e4e1/postgres-at-time-zone-u-does-not-do-what-...
127•birdculture•1d ago•70 comments

Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock

https://colo.to/nvidia-stock-narrative.html
983•Eric_Gullichsen•15h ago•417 comments

Solving a corn puzzle with CP-SAT

https://thill.me/2026/07/16/corn-puzzle-sat-solver.html
4•luu•20h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Hntui – A TUI for Hacker News

https://github.com/ahmd-sh/hntui
94•ahmd-sh•5h ago•43 comments

Ember-1

https://fireworks.ai/blog/ember-1
556•gmays•23h ago•239 comments

When did Google get so weird?

https://sancho.bearblog.dev/google-weird/
1637•sancho-panza•21h ago•890 comments

Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain

https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/INNOVATION/TECHNOLOGY/ARCHIVE/E_POWER_GEN3/
136•mroche•14h ago•302 comments

Cf: The Agentic CLI for the Cloudflare API

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-cf-cli-launch/
7•macleos•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Free alternative to graphics design giants

https://scissor.studio/
47•sia_xi•8h ago•16 comments

Thinking fast and slow in AI: The role of metacognition (2021)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.01834
160•teleforce•13h ago•61 comments

Self-Hosting on the Dark Web

https://david.alvarezrosa.com/posts/self-hosting-on-the-dark-web/
314•mooreds•21h ago•105 comments

Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps (2025)

https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software/
142•evakhoury•22h ago•68 comments

How Pew Research Center is – and is not – using AI in our work

https://www.pewresearch.org/decoded/2026/09/28/how-pew-research-center-is-and-is-not-using-ai-in-...
3•hn_acker•7m ago•0 comments

Alan Kay's answer to “Did the ENIAC have a BIOS”?

https://www.quora.com/Did-the-ENIAC-have-a-BIOS/answer/Alan-Kay-11
174•midnightfish•21h ago•60 comments

MongoDB CEO resigns "effective immediately" to join Meta, stock drops 20%

https://www.reuters.com/technology/mongodb-ceo-desai-steps-down-lead-metas-enterprise-platform-20...
108•diek•2h ago•112 comments

Guitar amp and effects pedal built on the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.06

https://github.com/dashersw/coyopedal
144•arbayi•2d ago•73 comments

Functional Mechanical Sympathy [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSHmDnUZCm8
59•surprisetalk•2d ago•11 comments

Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah

https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/2103890594137309425
38•slowin•1h ago•8 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.