On 8/18/2011 8:03 AM, Monty Zukowski wrote:
The Little Lisper is one of my favorite computer books. I think it
teaches the idea of Lisp, though without expounding on it.
I mean, I am basically familiar with both Lisp and Scheme, but the way
the statement was written implied there was some specific "idea of Lisp"
which was separate from the language itself, which was confusing (I was
not sure what this "idea" was in reference to exactly).
or, stated another way, the original statement confused me somewhat.
I would have personally found a statement like, for example, "the idea
of Lisp having cons cells composed of a pair of members named car and
cdr with car being understood as referencing the current element and cdr
being understood as referencing the next cons cell in the list or to a
terminating symbol or EOL and being understood to represent a list of
items." to be a little more obvious.
although, from experiences with others, I suspect my way of thinking
about things may not be the same as everyone elses', and it is possibly
the case that a lot of what I write is similarly non-obvious.
for example, some people also accuse my writing style as being overly
verbose and/or nonsensical, when often this is me trying to make sure to
express enough details to where any relevant context/... is not absent.
(just saw Alan's comment. yes, this clarifies things somewhat.)
Monty
On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 1:33 AM, BGB<cr88...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/17/2011 6:41 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
Take a look at Landin's papers and especially ISWIM ("The next 700
programming languages")
You don't so much want to learn Lisp as to learn "the idea of Lisp"
now, I am wondering some what is exactly "the idea of Lisp"?
putting the phrase into Google doesn't seem to turn up many obvious
candidates.
a guess: only a few syntax elements and types can represent a large variety
of stuff (like, the world can be built up from a reasonably simple core).
tried to make other guesses, but none really seem to stick.
maybe also "code is data" and a few other things.
(sorry, I tend to be a bit literal-minded and am not always so good at
figuring out things like this).
actually, it is sort of like the task of trying to write out a spec for a
high-level overview of my object system and core typesystem and semantics.
one has a sense of what it is, but trying to effectively explain it is
difficult. basic idea: class-instance + dynamic extension + delegation +
scopes-are-objects + ...
sorry, I don't mean to make my stuff seem overly important, even if I am
prone to write about it a lot.
Cheers,
Alan
________________________________
From: karl ramberg<karlramb...@gmail.com>
To: Fundamentals of New Computing<fonc@vpri.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Extending object oriented programming in Smalltalk
Hi,
Just reading a Lisp book my self.
Lisp seems to be very pure at the bottom level.
The nesting in parentheses are hard to read and comprehend / debug.
Things get not so pretty when all sorts of DSL are made to make it more
powerful.
The REPL give it a kind of wing clipped aura; there is more to computing
than text io
Karl
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 8:00 PM, DeNigris Sean<s...@clipperadams.com>
wrote:
Alan,
While we're on the subject, you finally got to me and I started learning
LISP, but I'm finding an entire world, rather than a cohesive language or
philosophy (Scheme - which itself has many variants, Common LISP, etc). What
would you recommend to "get it" in the way that changes your thinking? What
should I be reading, downloading, coding, etc.
Thanks.
Sean DeNigris
You wouldn't say that "Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual" is outdated would you?
:-)
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