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A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

https://refp.se/articles/your-shell-and-the-magic-colon
71•olexsmir•17h ago•23 comments

An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

https://blog.ktz.me/esp32-plane-radar/
94•alexktz•4h ago•16 comments

JetZero

https://www.jetzero.aero
167•lisper•4h ago•114 comments

The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

https://claude.com/blog/the-new-rules-of-context-engineering-for-claude-5-generation-models
280•mellosouls•10h ago•170 comments

Show HN: I mapped every US golf course

https://golfcoursebrowser.com/
102•rickmf•4h ago•48 comments

Inflect-Micro-v2: complete voice in 9.36M parameters

https://huggingface.co/owensong/Inflect-Micro-v2
88•nateb2022•6h ago•6 comments

Stinkpot: SQLite-backed shell history

https://tangled.org/oppi.li/stinkpot
23•nerdypepper•1d ago•1 comments

Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era

https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/ai-strategy-statement
59•jjwiseman•2d ago•21 comments

Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey Home

https://www.seti.org/news/alien-world-chemistry-found-inside-meteorite/
42•spzx•5h ago•14 comments

Running a 28.9M parameter LLM on an $8 microcontroller

https://github.com/slvDev/esp32-ai
150•boveyking•12h ago•30 comments

Clinical failure rates over the decades: yikes

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/clinical-failure-rates-over-decades-yikes
89•EA-3167•8h ago•52 comments

Systems and Delays

https://martin.janiczek.cz/2026/07/24/systems-and-delays.html
56•vinhnx•6h ago•13 comments

W4ME Station – a WASM-4 runtime for Java ME phones

https://github.com/mulfyx/w4me-station
12•sqshi•2h ago•2 comments

LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002
132•zdw•11h ago•114 comments

Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

https://tobi.knaup.me/2026-07-25-open-weight-ai-is-having-its-kubernetes-moment/
365•tknaup•16h ago•283 comments

Librrd Playground

https://systemf.epfl.ch/etc/librrd/
4•E-Reverance•4d ago•2 comments

SIMD for Collision

https://box2d.org/posts/2026/07/simd-for-collision/
84•birdculture•3d ago•26 comments

GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

https://spectrum.ieee.org/sodium-ion-battery-peak-energy
166•rbanffy•9h ago•68 comments

Zero roadkill as Amazon canopy bridges secure 15,000 crossings

https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/zero-roadkill-as-amazon-canopy-bridges-secure-15000-crossings/
348•hn_acker•3d ago•99 comments

Show HN: I made some transistor animations

https://brandonli.net/semisim/animations
159•stunningllama•1d ago•20 comments

Agatha Christie's Disappearance: Amnesia, Suicide, or Despair?

https://www.historicmysteries.com/unexplained-mysteries/agatha-christie-disappearance/23136/
20•thunderbong•3d ago•6 comments

Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

https://ammoniaenergy.org/articles/flexible-renewable-ammonia-demonstrator-now-operational-in-min...
116•gritzko•11h ago•81 comments

Cloudflare's new AI traffic options for customers

https://blog.cloudflare.com/content-independence-day-ai-options/
93•alphabetatango•8h ago•69 comments

Show HN: Brolly, a plain-text weather forecast site

https://brolly.sh/forecast/RWFP2qW8
171•jsax•13h ago•51 comments

Turn And Face The Strange

https://fly.io/blog/kurt-scott-money-sprites/
189•subarctic•10h ago•126 comments

Memory Safety Absolutists

https://itsallaboutthebit.com/memory-safety-absolutists/
81•drogus•12h ago•120 comments

Retry Storm Lab

https://github.com/telemetry-sh/retry-storm-lab
7•flurly•3d ago•0 comments

Android May Soon Restrict On-Device ADB

https://kitsumed.github.io/blog/posts/android-may-soon-restrict-on-device-adb/
906•shscs911•1d ago•446 comments

Did They Ghost You?

https://didtheyghostyou.com/
367•mooreds•10h ago•166 comments

Bitchat is now on Radicle

https://radicle.network/nodes/rosa.radicle.network/rad%3Az2v9tRJz1oknFAqCSY5W5c76nVvm6
232•h1watt•17h ago•128 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.