21–30 of 109 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many times. A google for "sweet expressions lisp" will give you a bunch of implementations and opinions.
Aha, thanks https://dwheeler.com/readable/
Thanks.
As somebody who read a couple of the author's books, and also somebody who spent almost a decade studying compilers, I am genuinely curious about the author himself. These works are something I both understand and would never achieve myself. These are cultural artifacts, like deeply personal poetry, made purely for the process of it. Not practically useful, not state of the art, not research level, but... a personal…
I do not usually talk much about "myself". I tried, but with no-one asking, I find it difficult to say anything.
As somebody who read a couple of the author's books, and also somebody who spent almost a decade studying compilers, I am genuinely curious about the author himself. These works are something I both understand and would never achieve myself. These are cultural artifacts, like deeply personal poetry, made purely for the process of it. Not practically useful, not state of the art, not research level, but... a personal…
Thank you so much for reading my books and describing my work in such beautiful words! You basically answered your own question! My motivation is just the creation of something I find beautiful. The vision, to pass knowledge to those who seek it in the simplest possible way, where "simple" does not necessarily mean in the tersest form, but in a form that invites being digested. I do not usually talk much about "mysel…
Cage.
Thanks for An Introduction to Mental Development, I've throughly enjoyed it!
(credit to https://aphyr.com/posts/340-reversing-the-technical-intervie..., I always get a kick out of that and the follow up https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview).
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Thanks. I recently had to reinvent LISP to script my CRDT database. That was not much work, because I already had the notation (I use RDX, a JSON superset with CRDT types). Still, I stumbled at the idiosyncratic LISP bracketing. Luckily, RDX allows for different tuple notations. So, I styled it to look less alien to a curly-braced developer. Like this https://github.com/gritzko/go-rdx/blob/main/test/13-getput.j... Fo…
There have been many attempts to get rid of sexprs in favor of a “better” syntax. Even John McCarthy, the inventor (discoverer?) of Lisp had plans for an “M-expression” syntax to replace “S-expressions.” It never happened. The secret is that Lispers actually view sexprs as an advantage, not something to be worked around. Once you discover symbolic editing and code manipulation based on sexprs, you’ll never go back to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks. I recently had to reinvent LISP to script my CRDT database. That was not much work, because I already had the notation (I use RDX, a JSON superset with CRDT types). Still, I stumbled at the idiosyncratic LISP bracketing. Luckily, RDX allows for different tuple notations. So, I styled it to look less alien to a curly-braced developer. Like this https://github.com/gritzko/go-rdx/blob/main/test/13-getput.j... Fo…
I sometimes wonder if the issue is really the parentheses or the ease of nesting. In LISP it’s natural to write (f (g (h x))). Whereas most people are used to. a = h(x); b = g(a); c = f(b); In C/C++ most functions return error codes, forcing the latter form. And then there are functional languages allowing: x -> h -> g -> f but I think the implicit parameter passing doesn’t sit well with a lot of programmers either.
More likely than not it's a matter of what a person gets used to. I've enjoyed working in Lisp/Scheme and C, but not so much in primarily functional languages. No doubt programmers have varied histories that explain their preferences.
As you imply, in C one could write nested functions as f (g (h (x))) if examining return values is unnecessary. OTOH in Lisp return values are also often needed, prompting use of (let ...) forms, etc., which can make function nesting unclear. In reality programming languages are all guilty of potential obscurity. We just develop a taste for what flavor of obscurity we prefer to work with.
doesn't seem to fit with:
"INTENDED AUDIENCE This is not an introduction to LISP."
on page 10.
As somebody who read a couple of the author's books, and also somebody who spent almost a decade studying compilers, I am genuinely curious about the author himself. These works are something I both understand and would never achieve myself. These are cultural artifacts, like deeply personal poetry, made purely for the process of it. Not practically useful, not state of the art, not research level, but... a personal…
Thank you so much for reading my books and describing my work in such beautiful words! You basically answered your own question! My motivation is just the creation of something I find beautiful. The vision, to pass knowledge to those who seek it in the simplest possible way, where "simple" does not necessarily mean in the tersest form, but in a form that invites being digested. I do not usually talk much about "mysel…