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The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

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Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#61

Post by sph »

jakeinspace wrote: post #36

I’m fairly annoyed with myself on my worse days for heading into embedded as a career path when Lisp (clojure mainly) is the only development process I’ve really ever felt fit my brain. I’m positive that there is a Lispy language out there (actually in existence, or the aether) that is appropriate for embedded work, but the constraints of the target make it difficult to envision. I like C and assembly because they’re…

I just got a Pico W to run Forth on. It's like a REPL for low level hardware, and I'm unreasonably excited to play with it this weekend.

Somehow I've gone 36 years without anyone telling me I could do explorative programming on bare metal, and now I can't shut up about it.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#62

Post by sph »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #20

This very much describes me to a T and I've come to realize I just have ADHD and (excuse the narcissism) above average mental capacity in some subjects. Haven't gotten diagnosed yet, but both my SO and my best friend have it, and the parallels are staggering and explain a lot about my behaviour. I've developed a shit ton of personal techniques to gain some focus even when it seems impossible and engage in humility to…

> Other people in this position, what did you do?

Got medicated, and reduced the amount of billable hours to a minimum that lets me make rent, and gives me a ton of unstructured fun time to pursue today's source of dopamine. Today it's one library, tomorrow it's hacking on a project, next week, who knows?

In other words, make it so programming is a way to express your creativity, rather than simply your day job.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#63

Post by netbioserror »

I've found, as a Lisper, that the secret to being effective and valuable to a company such that you're both irreplaceable and not too much of a drag on the rest of the organization is to pick secret weapons that have slightly more overlap with the normal world than Lisp.

Clojure, Nim, Elixir, and more faintly flirt with the true unbridled power of a CL environment, but primarily provide useful abstractions and some familiarity, compatibility, and/or killer features that can't be turned down as easily as a true CL environment. It works out, when the company is small enough that you're driving your own project. Just be sure do document what you did.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#64

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

sph wrote: post #62
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #20

This very much describes me to a T and I've come to realize I just have ADHD and (excuse the narcissism) above average mental capacity in some subjects. Haven't gotten diagnosed yet, but both my SO and my best friend have it, and the parallels are staggering and explain a lot about my behaviour. I've developed a shit ton of personal techniques to gain some focus even when it seems impossible and engage in humility to…

> Other people in this position, what did you do? Got medicated, and reduced the amount of billable hours to a minimum that lets me make rent, and gives me a ton of unstructured fun time to pursue today's source of dopamine. Today it's one library, tomorrow it's hacking on a project, next week, who knows? In other words, make it so programming is a way to express your creativity, rather than simply your day job.

Thanks for the comment. I've been trying to program creatively again like I used to, but it's hard with a stable job (even though I have quite a lot of freedom in work hours and output by employment standards).

> Got medicated

Used to be addicted to amphetamines so I think I'll pass on this one. It's effective, definitely, but I don't think I can have a sizeable amount of them at disposal or bad things happen.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#65

Post by bmitc »

bsima wrote: post #54
bmitc wrote: post #34

Does anyone use Shen? I was looking into it recently and thus recognize the author of this post as the originator of Shen. https://shenlanguage.org/ Why would one use Shen over Common Lisp, Racket, Chez Scheme, or Clojure, for example?

I love Shen and highly recommend the Book of Shen and Tarver's other book on Logic and Computation. The crazy thing about Shen is that its type system is sequent calculus, which means when you define your types, you are literally writing the same language that mathematicians use when they prove things about type theories. Why would you use it? Because you can leverage a crazy amount of power by writing your own type…

Thank you for the link to the talk! I'll watch it for sure.

If I am interesting in using functional languages (currently F#, Elixir, and Racket) to explore GUI systems, graphics, symbolic math, numerical computing like machine learning and swarm algorithms and automatic differentiation, agent-based modeling, fractals and general chaos theory stuff, etc., is Shen a good match for that type of exploratory, almost from first principles but towards something that is actually usable work?

Is Shen closer to Scheme or Lisp? I typically fall in the Scheme side of things a la Racket.

Thanks for all the information and help!

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#66

Post by dang »

Related:

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21999802 - Jan 2020 (2 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467473 - Jan 2017 (57 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904208 - Jan 2015 (11 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801608 - Dec 2014 (25 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3374849 - Dec 2011 (38 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2275657 - March 2011 (86 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (an oldie but a goodie) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859669 - Oct 2009 (22 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=187867 - May 2008 (15 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78739 - Nov 2007 (32 comments)

The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012 - May 2007 (8 comments)

(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#67

Post by potta_coffee »

sph wrote: post #58
bloopernova wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment and the grandparent comment have both really validated me. I know that's weird to say, but I really thought I was just Wrong about the linters/LSPs and unfinished lines or unused variables. Thank you :)

Those that implemented the unused variable feature are completely unaware that there are two modalities of programming: exploring a problem space, and building a solid product. When you're exploring, you don't want your compiler to stop you in your tracks to warn you about pedantic nonsense. It's not a syntax error that prevents your compiler from understanding, it's just arbitrary restriction that the compiler decid…

I'm certain they're aware of the second modality; I just think that Go is narrowly focused in design and it's not really for that other kind of user.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#68

Post by bsima »

bmitc wrote: post #65
bsima wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Shen and highly recommend the Book of Shen and Tarver's other book on Logic and Computation. The crazy thing about Shen is that its type system is sequent calculus, which means when you define your types, you are literally writing the same language that mathematicians use when they prove things about type theories. Why would you use it? Because you can leverage a crazy amount of power by writing your own type…

Thank you for the link to the talk! I'll watch it for sure. If I am interesting in using functional languages (currently F#, Elixir, and Racket) to explore GUI systems, graphics, symbolic math, numerical computing like machine learning and swarm algorithms and automatic differentiation, agent-based modeling, fractals and general chaos theory stuff, etc., is Shen a good match for that type of exploratory, almost from…

Definitely usable for those cases. You might have to do some extra work to build the necessary libraries though.

It’s closer to scheme I think, being a lisp-1, even though it’s originally implemented in Common Lisp.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#69

Post by BoxOfRain »

polypodiopsi wrote: post #24
BoxOfRain wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disorder’s called visual snow syndrome, it’s named after the main symptom that differentiates it from other disorders which is TV-static like visual distortion but it sometimes causes a lot of other things typically associated with migraine to the point before it was studied in its own right it was assumed to be an uncommon variation of migraine; unlike migraine though for many people it doesn’t produce any pain…

Just a intuitive thought, a bit unresponsible maybe, so consider on your own risk: you researched the effects of ketamine and its derivatives on your disorder? Din't know why I think of this; probably because they are know to also affect obscure pain stuff like phantom pains and generally interact with perception (I feel it reduces oversensitivities like not beeing able to bare some stimulus and such) currently resea…

If I'm ever eligible for a study into it I'd definitely at least consider the idea, though it's not something I'd want to do outside of medical supervision given the mechanism of my condition is not well characterised yet.

One anecdotal thing from support groups etc that makes me cautious is that while some people are born with it and some people contract it spontaneously later in life (this was my case), other people can contract it after taking various types of drug. Typically these are serotonergic drugs like antidepressants, psychedelics, and that sort of thing which aren't in the same category so it'd probably be okay but it's definitely possible I can make things worse as well as better.

Re: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007)

#70

Post by potta_coffee »

netbioserror wrote: post #63

I've found, as a Lisper, that the secret to being effective and valuable to a company such that you're both irreplaceable and not too much of a drag on the rest of the organization is to pick secret weapons that have slightly more overlap with the normal world than Lisp. Clojure, Nim, Elixir, and more faintly flirt with the true unbridled power of a CL environment, but primarily provide useful abstractions and some f…

What do you like about Nim? I've started playing with it and it's quite comfy but I don't know much about it's capabilities yet.
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