Homoiconic Spreadsheets: What, How and Why [video]

I am not a fan of anonymous functions. I think they are evocative of maths culture tendency to remove and make meaningless names(for example, using greek letters). Yes I know naming things is hard, but names are important, they are critical labels about the inner inner working of the machine.

Nothing wrong with functional programing, in fact it is pretty great, But I wish people would name their functions.

Re: Homoiconic Spreadsheets: What, How and Why [video]

#6

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 12:35 AM UTC

somat wrote: post #5

I am not a fan of anonymous functions. I think they are evocative of maths culture tendency to remove and make meaningless names(for example, using greek letters). Yes I know naming things is hard, but names are important, they are critical labels about the inner inner working of the machine. Nothing wrong with functional programing, in fact it is pretty great, But I wish people would name their functions.

[deleted]

Re: Homoiconic Spreadsheets: What, How and Why [video]

#7

Post by savq » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:10 AM UTC

europeanguy wrote: post #2

You know what language is also homoiconic? Julia.

Saying that is pretty out of context. It's also incorrect. Julia has runtime code generation and hygenic macros, but it's not homoiconic. Clearly,

  x + 1

is different from

  Expr(:call, :+, :x, 1)

Re: Homoiconic Spreadsheets: What, How and Why [video]

#8

Post by bradrn » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:21 AM UTC

somat wrote: post #5

I am not a fan of anonymous functions. I think they are evocative of maths culture tendency to remove and make meaningless names(for example, using greek letters). Yes I know naming things is hard, but names are important, they are critical labels about the inner inner working of the machine. Nothing wrong with functional programing, in fact it is pretty great, But I wish people would name their functions.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s better to avoid naming functions, especially if they’re small and only used once. For instance, if I’m doing something like ‘map (\(x,y) -> (x,y+1))’ to increment the second element of each item in a list (using Haskell syntax), naming the anonymous function won’t necessarily make anything clearer. Or consider this example from my own code:

    zipWith (\i m -> fmap (i,) m) [0..]

Sure, I could rewrite it as ‘zipWith prependToEachElement [0..]’, but if you know Haskell that’s not all that much shorter or clearer, especially for a function which might only be used once in the whole program.

Re: Homoiconic Spreadsheets: What, How and Why [video]

#9

Post by whacked_new » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

intriguing presentation! So I have 1 prediction and 1 question.

prediction: even though lambdas bring "code programming" into spreadsheets, and it's a huge leap in functionality for the spreadsheet, the dominant programming mode in the spreadsheet will still be interactive programming in the "traditional" spreadsheet sense. I claim this because the mental model of code programming is different from interactive programming. That said, this will extend the reach of code programming output to the hands of more millions (who will simply copy and paste).

question: the direction of spreadsheets moving into lamdas makes as much sense as "lambdas" into spreadsheets. We've seen several new spreadsheet implementations pop up in the past years, including ones with built-in programming capability, but none of them really seem like as big of a deal as Gsheets/Excel adding lambdas. Presumably this is because spreadsheets include a ton of other features that prove its widespread usefulness even before adding things like metaprogramming. Is this about right, or did I miss a great product/language in the wild?

Re: Homoiconic Spreadsheets: What, How and Why [video]

#10

Post by avindroth » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 3:28 AM UTC

somat wrote: post #5

I am not a fan of anonymous functions. I think they are evocative of maths culture tendency to remove and make meaningless names(for example, using greek letters). Yes I know naming things is hard, but names are important, they are critical labels about the inner inner working of the machine. Nothing wrong with functional programing, in fact it is pretty great, But I wish people would name their functions.

I think it's a balancing act between labeling and mislabeling. Some things are so hard to name that naming them actually hurts. Also sometimes you don't want to pin down what it actually is; naming restricts the concept.

Wrt maths, you did maths without greek letters and with plain english, you'd have pretty ugly formulas. Greek letters, while obtrusive to newcomers, can be a lifesaver for conciseness in expression.