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See the HN-famous books "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming," and "On Lisp." The claim is th
by asolove 17y ago
See the HN-famous books "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming," and "On Lisp."
The claim is that Lisp is a language at a higher level of abstraction. You will have to study hard to be able to appreciate that level, but it cannot be explained in another way.
Imagine explaining Calculus to a high school Physics student. You're likely to get back: "But I can find the acceleration of an object by using normal algebra and subtracting its position at two different times!" Calculus is hard, its benefits are not clearly better than approximation or high school algebra until you reach a level at which you brain thinks of Calculus as fundamental and sees the old equations as merely derived, less-powerful versions.
Why would you expect a mind-expanding language to be any easier to explain?
- clueless123 17y agoDude... that is a very good analogy! point well taken.
- silentbicycle 17y agoAlso, it's worth noting that all three books implement a subset of Prolog (in Lisp). Prolog is another language which sounds really bizarre, but can be incredibly powerful. It's less general purpose than Lisp, though - essentially, it works by searching for answers that fulfill all criteria you specify, backtracking to (lazily) generate alternative answers as needed. It's conceptually really cool, and is great for prototyping certain kinds of problems. Some of the literature is also quite good, particularly _The Art of Prolog_ by Sterling & Shapiro.