11–20 of 145 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well M-expressions to be more precise. Actually if you ask some they'll tell you that Mathematica is the only Lisp that implemented them.
Or M-LISP. Or Logo for that matter (loosely).
"I wonder which will become self-aware first -- Wolfram Alpha, or Stephen Wolfram."
“Does anyone want to bet as to which will gain self-awareness first: Wolfram Alpha or Wolfram, Stephen?”
Seems like a good example of technical people placing too much importance on a technical decision. It seems clear Lisp would have been a perfectly fine choice, as would a number of other languages. It also seems unlikely the world (or even Mathematica) would be dramatically different for it. I wish more "X is better than Y because of Z" discussions would admit aesthetics were an important factor. Instead we end up wi…
To me it sounds more like NIH syndrome. Wolfram was young, smart, cocky, and didn't really know much about computation when he started - but was convinced he could do a better job if he started from scratch.
He remains two of those things to this day. I have no doubt Wolfram is legitimately a genius (despite his arrogance and tendency to take credit for other people's inventions) and I adore Mathematica as it is, but I can't help but wonder how much better it would be if Wolfram's personality was less... abrasive.
Isn't Mathematica very Lispy? It looks like R-expressions.
Well M-expressions to be more precise. Actually if you ask some they'll tell you that Mathematica is the only Lisp that implemented them.
If that's not extreme NIH, I don't know what is.
Another possible reason would be: Macsyma was already in LISP.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well M-expressions to be more precise. Actually if you ask some they'll tell you that Mathematica is the only Lisp that implemented them.
And with good cause, I think. Mathematica syntax (both the verbose form and with the various syntactical sugar) is immensely more readable to the average person than Lisp. Of course, this could have been done on top of Lisp anyways (and wouldn't that be nice?)
Example:
applysymmetry(exp,opdum,symtype):=block(
[getdum:get(opdum,symtype),piece,inflag:true,partswitch:true],
if getdum=false then return(exp),
subst(lambda([[arglist]],
apply('aplsym1,append(getdum,[arglist,opdum]))),
opdum,exp))$
"I wonder which will become self-aware first -- Wolfram Alpha, or Stephen Wolfram."