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For me it is less about being scared, more about s-expressions being more friction-less in enough circumstances for it to matter. One thing that - to me - seem
by dgb23 5y ago
For me it is less about being scared, more about s-expressions being more friction-less in enough circumstances for it to matter.
One thing that - to me - seems like a missed opportunity is to use Lisp notation in mathematics. There are many fields such as algebra, logic and so on that lend itself to being expressed in terms of a Lisp. It isn't just about avoiding ambiguity, but also about having a uniform way to mechanically transform expressions.
- pjmlp 5y agoYeah, but in mathematics we end up in the classical Lisp vs ML discussion, there is a known paper about both styles actually, arguing for ML, as it was written from someone on the ML side of the fence. In any case, maybe "Computer Algebra with LISP and REDUCE: An Introduction to Computer-aided Pure Mathematics" is something to dive into, https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Algebra-LISP-REDUCE-Computer-aided/dp/0792314417/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Computer+Algebra+with+LISP+and+REDUCE&qid=1633424049&sr=8-2 https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Algebra-LISP-REDUCE-Computer...
- dgb23 5y agoThank you for sharing! You may have recognized that I'm not terribly aware of the history behind this discussion and its arguments. It's more of an intuition built from using and exploring Scheme and Clojure. My intuition is that if you have a uniform, flexible notation, then you get to use the same set of mechanical transformation tools for any language, which leads to more cross pollination and common solutions. But I could see how the meaning of that notation can get overloaded if you jump from context to context, say declarative versus algorithmic.