5 ms·

#1 is a pretty serious charge. You posted this four hours ago and haven't posted any evidence to substantiate it. Maybe you confused Urbit with another projec

by yarvin9 10y ago

#1 is a pretty serious charge. You posted this four hours ago and haven't posted any evidence to substantiate it. Maybe you confused Urbit with another project, and would like to retract? It's certainly an understandable mistake. #2 is not worth bringing up again, but you might want to look carefully at the dictionary meaning of the word "avowed." If a person denies being a communist, it is still possible for him to be a communist, but perhaps it doth protest too much if you go all the way to "avowed communist." #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp, and (b) Hoon is a typed language. "Only dedicated people would learn it" sounds like an interesting marketing tactic which must involve some kind of strong reverse psychology. Frankly, I have enough trouble with basic forward psychology. #4 would be perfectly true, except that the company owns less than half of the Urbit namespace. The rest has been distributed across about 50 more or less random individuals. (I think I know the hackerspace you mean -- Bloomington? A bunch of them drove to LambdaConf and interned. Incredibly smart, nice and wonderful young people, needless to say. I'd hang out with them all the time if I lived there.)

lisper 10y ago
> #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp It is not hard to re-invent/re-discover Lisp. In fact, it happens all the time. So just because you don't know Lisp doesn't mean you haven't re-invented it, though it does likely mean that you have re-invented it badly. Re-inventions of Lisp are sadly common. Good re-inventions of Lisp are rare. And good re-inventions of Lisp by people who don't know Lisp are unheard of. I have never understood, and still don't understand, why you choose to wear your ignorance with such pride. BTW: > Hoon is a typed language So is Lisp.
- yarvin9 10y ago
  Learning Lisp is easy. Learning Haskell is hard. But unlearning either is next to impossible. So anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem. Now, one might feel differently if Lisp, or Haskell, or any other functional language, was such a conspicuous market success. Under the circumstances, however, I don't think one can be faulted for the suspicion that perhaps functional programming is too important to be left to the functional programmers. I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. I realize that people with IQs of 175 have an uncanny knack for taking indefensible positions and then defending them, but I'll just have to take this one on trust. While we're measuring our respective equipment, however, we can agree that Lisp has macros. Hoon does not have macros, because it's a pure typed language and a pure typed language doesn't need macros. If Hoon did have macros, however, they would be inherently hygienic, without anything like a gensym. If this is a good time for you to favor us with a lecture on the virtues of Lisp, perhaps you could start with gensyms and their place in "Maxwell's equations of software."
  - lisper 10y ago
    > I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. That seems like a peculiar position to take in light of your self-avowed and (apparently) carefully cultivated ignorance of Lisp. If you don't know Lisp, how would you know if it's typed or not? BTW, here's a clue. (Spoiler alert! You may learn something about Lisp by reading the following.): Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.10-r16479M (DarwinX8664)! ? (type-of (sqrt -2)) (COMPLEX (SINGLE-FLOAT 0.0 1.4142135)) ? (sqrt 'x) > Error: The value X is not of the expected type NUMBER. > anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem. I am reminded of this koan: In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied. "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said. Minsky then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened. > Hoon does not have macros Most languages don't. > a pure typed language doesn't need macros. Of course. No language needs macros. That's why most languages are serviceable despite not having them. > favor us with a lecture You should be careful. As you yourself have just observed, losing your ignorance is a one-way street. The more you let me teach you, the closer you get to the edge.
    - yarvin9 10y ago
      Actually, if you watch the video of the LambdaConf talk, I believe you'll see me deride Lisp as having (and needing) dynamically typed atoms. I had no idea the concept of an atom had indeed degenerated all the way into complex numbers, which to me and to all decent Americans will always be a "cons" cell. Obviously I had not reckoned with the full and complete degeneracy of Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.10. Or something. If I knew Lisp, I could perhaps condemn it correctly. In any case, sir: you are misinformed. A "dynamic" type system isn't actually a type system. At best, it's a sort of crutch for retired Jedis who can barely swing their obsolete, one-ended lightsabers. Or do you wish to become enlightened? Come visit our library, old Jedi. At urbit.org, we have all the enlightenment you need. The age of Lisp was glorious, true. But much time has passed and much we have learned. The times change, uncle, and we must change with them.

by yarvin9 10y ago

lisper 10y ago

> #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp It is not hard to re-invent/re-discover Lisp. In fact, it happens all the time. So just because you don't know Lisp doesn't mean you haven't re-invented it, though it does likely mean that you have re-invented it badly. Re-inventions of Lisp are sadly common. Good re-inventions of Lisp are rare. And good re-inventions of Lisp by people who don't know Lisp are unheard of. I have never understood, and still don't understand, why you choose to wear your ignorance with such pride. BTW: > Hoon is a typed language So is Lisp.

yarvin9 10y ago
Learning Lisp is easy. Learning Haskell is hard. But unlearning either is next to impossible. So anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem. Now, one might feel differently if Lisp, or Haskell, or any other functional language, was such a conspicuous market success. Under the circumstances, however, I don't think one can be faulted for the suspicion that perhaps functional programming is too important to be left to the functional programmers. I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. I realize that people with IQs of 175 have an uncanny knack for taking indefensible positions and then defending them, but I'll just have to take this one on trust. While we're measuring our respective equipment, however, we can agree that Lisp has macros. Hoon does not have macros, because it's a pure typed language and a pure typed language doesn't need macros. If Hoon did have macros, however, they would be inherently hygienic, without anything like a gensym. If this is a good time for you to favor us with a lecture on the virtues of Lisp, perhaps you could start with gensyms and their place in "Maxwell's equations of software."
- lisper 10y ago
  > I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. That seems like a peculiar position to take in light of your self-avowed and (apparently) carefully cultivated ignorance of Lisp. If you don't know Lisp, how would you know if it's typed or not? BTW, here's a clue. (Spoiler alert! You may learn something about Lisp by reading the following.): Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.10-r16479M (DarwinX8664)! ? (type-of (sqrt -2)) (COMPLEX (SINGLE-FLOAT 0.0 1.4142135)) ? (sqrt 'x) > Error: The value X is not of the expected type NUMBER. > anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem. I am reminded of this koan: In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied. "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said. Minsky then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened. > Hoon does not have macros Most languages don't. > a pure typed language doesn't need macros. Of course. No language needs macros. That's why most languages are serviceable despite not having them. > favor us with a lecture You should be careful. As you yourself have just observed, losing your ignorance is a one-way street. The more you let me teach you, the closer you get to the edge.
  - yarvin9 10y ago
    Actually, if you watch the video of the LambdaConf talk, I believe you'll see me deride Lisp as having (and needing) dynamically typed atoms. I had no idea the concept of an atom had indeed degenerated all the way into complex numbers, which to me and to all decent Americans will always be a "cons" cell. Obviously I had not reckoned with the full and complete degeneracy of Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.10. Or something. If I knew Lisp, I could perhaps condemn it correctly. In any case, sir: you are misinformed. A "dynamic" type system isn't actually a type system. At best, it's a sort of crutch for retired Jedis who can barely swing their obsolete, one-ended lightsabers. Or do you wish to become enlightened? Come visit our library, old Jedi. At urbit.org, we have all the enlightenment you need. The age of Lisp was glorious, true. But much time has passed and much we have learned. The times change, uncle, and we must change with them.