Hacker News: cmacleod4

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Bring back crappy forums"

cmacleod4 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:09:45 +0000

"The internet today still does not have a good discussion medium like Usenet, and I am not sure if it ever will." Several web interfaces to Usenet exist, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit... . I operate one of these at https://newsgrouper.org/ .

Many Usenet groups have been abandoned, or are haunted only by a few cranks, but a few still have worthwhile discussion. A couple of years ago there was a tidal wave of spam, but that mostly stopped after Google Groups disconnected. So the infrastructure is still there, still free of adverts and manipulative algorithms, just waiting for more people to use it.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "OpenACS and Tcl/Tk conference: Talks list now online"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:06:21 +0000

The list of talks for this year's Tcl and OpenACS conference has just been published: https://openacs.km.at/ . It's all happening in Vienna, Austria, on 16 & 17 July. Registration officially closes tomorrow, but late applications are quite likely to be accepted.

OpenACS and Tcl/Tk conference: Talks list now online

cmacleod4 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:06:21 +0000

Article URL: https://openacs.km.at/evaluate/org/129998253/conferencenews/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721057

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?"

cmacleod4 — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:06:53 +0000

As another post pointed out, AI as a field of research started about the time I was born (LLMs are another matter of course). So everything I've created has been since that time. Some of my software tools are listed at https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Colin+Macleod - no form of AI was involved in any of them.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Why TUIs are back"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:30:12 +0000

"worst case is trying to develop some small utility like a tool to search in files using regex" - you mean something like: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/ReacTcl+example%3A+Grv ?

This will run on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Tcl's starkit/starpack system makes it easy to generate a single executable file for each OS that can just be copied over and run without any installation needed.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Why TUIs are back"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:17:10 +0000

"there are no native GUI frameworks for simple tools that are easy, fast, and simple to develop in at the same time" - Tcl/Tk does all that just fine for me.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Usenet Archives"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:48:05 +0000

As I said, the user interface is awkward. You need to select the "Content" checkbox when searching for Posts. E.g. to search for "deadlock" within comp.lang.tcl, start with https://usenetarchives.com/index.php?s=deadlock%20ingroup:co... then select "Content", unselect "Author" and "Subject" and click "Search".

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Usenet Archives"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:37:14 +0000

In the early days Usenet propagation was slow and haphazard because the communication links available were very limited. Nowadays I can post a message on one Usenet server and it appears on other servers in a few seconds. So coherent real-time conversations are no problem.

On the other hand, with a long-running discussion, HN, Reddit, etc. still have no way to see what messages are new since you last looked at a thread, something which Usenet clients have always done and still do now.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Usenet Archives"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:35:08 +0000

Spam fell off drastically after Google Groups disconnected from Usenet a couple of years ago.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Usenet Archives"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:42:03 +0000

I had tried this site a year or two ago and found it unusable then, but it seems greatly improved now. I found posts as old as 1982, but recent coverage seems to stop around April 2022. Crucially, it supports full-text search on posts within a specific group - something which my own site https://newsgrouper.org cannot do. I find the user interface a little awkward, but it does now appear to be a really useful resource.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Signals, the push-pull based algorithm"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:10:32 +0000

Nice presentation, looks like the same thing I implemented in Tcl here: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/ReacTcl :-)

OpenACS and Tcl/Tk Conference 2026: Vienna, 16-17 July

cmacleod4 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:25:25 +0000

Article URL: https://openacs.km.at/evaluate/org/129998253/conferencenews/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630174

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Intuiting Pratt Parsing"

cmacleod4 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:57:15 +0000

I have a Tcl Improvement Proposal (TIP 676) currently being voted on which introduces an alternative compact form of calculation. The implementation uses a Pratt parser: https://core.tcl-lang.org/tcl/file?ci=cgm-equals-command&nam... which directly generates bytecode rather than creating a parse tree.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Undroidwish – A single-file, batteries-included Tcl/Tk binary for many platforms"

cmacleod4 — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:23:54 +0000

You might be interested in https://newsgrouper.org - my web interface to Usenet, text-only. The site is implemented in Tcl, but only needs a web browser for a client. Some Android users find it preferable to the available native clients.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "HyperCard discovery: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive (2022)"

cmacleod4 — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:39:29 +0000

Your question was probably misinterpreted as sarcasm. :-(

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

cmacleod4 — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:12:10 +0000

Here's mine: https://cmacleod.me.uk/ - I'm a retired programmer, my site has links to various projects, mostly in Tcl, some Javascript or C, also old blog, etc.

New comment by cmacleod4 in "List of Active Usenet Groups"

cmacleod4 — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 09:30:14 +0000

Note: when posting a link to an article on Newsgrouper it's best to use the "Permalink" at the bottom of the article. People clicking that will get straight to the article without needing to login as a guest. The permalink for this article is: https://newsgrouper.org/%3C10jcmri$l9u0$1@paganini.bofh.team...

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Sandboxing Untrusted Python"

cmacleod4 — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 13:15:42 +0000

As with most Python problems, the solution is to switch to Tcl - https://www.tcl-lang.org/man/tcl9.0/TclCmd/interp.html#M44 :-)

New comment by cmacleod4 in "Show HN: Feather – a fresh Tcl reimplementation (WASM, Go)"

cmacleod4 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 16:15:44 +0000

Very interesting!

Note that the name might be confused with an old project: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Feather .

New comment by cmacleod4 in "When if is just a function"

cmacleod4 — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 09:28:37 +0000

In Tcl you can redefine "if", or even delete it entirely if you're crazy enough :-)