Was Alonzo Church Taoist? • Hacker News Board

Re: Was Alonzo Church Taoist?

#21

Post by _7fvc » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

I don't see the connection. An example of yin-yang for me in this field is centralization vs. decentralization. We've been through a few cycles already.

1. mainframes (centralization)

2. PC (decentralization)

3. internet and cloud (centralization)

4. now with mobile, crypto/blockchain (decentralization)

Re: Was Alonzo Church Taoist?

#22

Post by martyalain » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

_7fvc wrote: post #21

I don't see the connection. An example of yin-yang for me in this field is centralization vs. decentralization. We've been through a few cycles already. 1. mainframes (centralization) 2. PC (decentralization) 3. internet and cloud (centralization) 4. now with mobile, crypto/blockchain (decentralization)

Why not? For me yin/yang is connected to abstraction/application, abstraction delaying the evaluation of an expression and application forcing the evaluation. {lambda {x y} {+ x y}} delay the evaluation of {+ x y} and {{lambda {x y} {+ x y}} 3 4} forces the evaluation of {+ 3 4} to 7. The article tries to gently introduce, in a few lines without grey areas, concepts in programming languages which are not so easy to understand, a few data structures, pairs and lists, and recursion without any strange Y-combinator ... implicitely used in the long convoluted expression full of lambdas and explained in long in the two links given at the bottom of the page. This short article is a gentle call to read longer introductions on the making of a functional language for the web. Not a philosophical reflexion on Taoism.

Re: Was Alonzo Church Taoist?

#23

Post by gpvos » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

martyalain wrote: post #20

gpvos wrote: post #7

I don't see any connection between this article and Taoism at all, apart from a quote at the top and a sentence at the bottom, both of which seem unconnected to the rest of the article. What am I missing?

Don't you see some similarity between Yin/Yang and abstraction/application? Female vs male, delay vs force ...

Okay, I suppose. I must admit I'm not very familiar with Taoism (I'm actually more of a presbyterian...).

Re: Was Alonzo Church Taoist?

#24

Post by martyalain » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #8

I’m disappointed; this is as shallow an understanding of Taoism as you’re likely to get. Sure, there is a core religious concept called “Taoism” that can sort of be described as “everything is a zero-sum duality of a producer and a consumer, which returns to nothing in equilibrium”—but in practice, people who are Taoist have a whole bunch of other, much more interesting beliefs. There’s an instant-classic article wai…

This is not an article about Taoism but a short reflexion about how two conjugate rules, abstraction & application, which have some similarities with the Tao's Yin/Yang, can be used to gently introduce a functional programming language in a few lines trying to avoid grey areas. More (serious) explanations can be seen in the links given at the end. I'm sorry if the title, a little provocative, has misled you.