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I just love his writing so much -- he captures what I felt when I discovered Lisp. As a kid learning programming in the 80s, I had already done some BASIC, Fort

I just love his writing so much -- he captures what I felt when I discovered Lisp. As a kid learning programming in the 80s, I had already done some BASIC, Fortran, Pascal and COBOL in high school and early college. There were differences, of course, but they had some fundamental commonality. At UC Berkeley, however, the first computer science class was taught in Scheme (a dialect of Lisp)...and it absolutely blew me away. Hofstadter is right: it feels the closest to math (reminding me a ton of my math theory classes). It was the first beautiful language I discovered. (edit: I forgot to paste in the quote I loved!) "...Lisp and Algol, are built around a kernel that seems as natural as a branch of mathematics. The kernel of Lisp has a crystalline purity that not only appeals to the esthetic sense, but also makes Lisp a far more flexible language than most others."

Jeff_Brown 2y ago
Have you tried Haskell? It feels much closer to math to me. Definitions, not procedures. It even looks like math.
- oaktowner 2y ago
  No! After about 10 years of writing software professionally, I moved over to product management, and my time spent coding decreased drastically (in the last 15 years, only some Python to show my kids a thing or two). But I'd love to try! Maybe I'll take an online class for fun.
  - Jeff_Brown 2y ago
    I can't recommend it highly enough. You're already familiar with laziness from Lisp, but purity is another head-trip. It made me a better programmer in any language, and even a better software architect before I've written a line of code. And algebraic data types make it possible to make your code conform to reality in ways that classes can't. Once you're exposed to them, it's very much like learning about addition after having been able to multiply for your whole life. (In fact that's more than a metaphor -- it's what's happening, in a category theoretic sense.) Haskell has other cool stuff too -- lenses, effect systems, recursion schemes, searching for functions based on their type signatures, really it's a very long list -- but I think laziness, purity and ADTs are the ones that really changed my brain for the better.
    - sourcepluck 2y ago
      Have you tried Coalton? It's a Common Lisp library that adds Haskell-esque (or near-Haskell) type wonders, and which smoothly interoperates with your Common Lisp code. Your comment is great though, consider me convinced. I've done a bit of messing with Lisp, but really would like to try write something in Haskell, or slog through a book or two, some day.
    - chamomeal 2y ago
      Damn that was a really good pitch. I think I’m too dumb to learn Haskell though lol. I’m struggling enough with immutability in clojure!!
      - eru 2y ago
        Haskell makes it easier, because immutability comes more natural there.
        Jeff_Brown 2y ago
        I should have listed immutability as another thing that changed my brain for the better.
      - fredrikholm 2y ago
        > I think I’m too dumb to learn Haskell though lol. I felt the same way, a lot of people feel that way. This is in part because FP is difficult, typed FP is difficult, and Haskell is difficult. All by themselves. They do get easier once you intuit more and more FP in general I'd say. Then there's also a phenomena described in the Haskell Pyramid[0] where it sometimes appears more difficult than it really is. Like a lot of things, actually building something gets you a long way, esp. with the advent of chat AIs as it's comparatively easy to go back an fourth and learn little by little. [0] https://patrickmn.com/software/the-haskell-pyramid/ https://patrickmn.com/software/the-haskell-pyramid/
      - adelineJoOs 2y ago
        As someone with some experience in Haskell (although not an expert by any means): Haskell and some of its concepts are foreign to many people, but I think that it is actually easier to program in Haskell than in many other languages I know. At least for my ADHD brain ;) This impression can be changed somehow by the fact that Haskell and its community has two faces: There is the friendly, "stuff-just-works" and "oh-nice-look-at-these-easy-to-understand-and-usefull-abstractions" pragmatic Haskell that uses the vanilla Language without many extensions, and being written by people that solve some real-world problem by programming. Then there is the hardcore academic crowd - in my experience, very friendly, but heavily into mathematics, types and program language theory. They make use of the fact that Haskell is also a research language with many extensions that are someones PhD thesis. Which might also be the only documentation for that particular extension if you are unlucky. However, you can always ask - the community is rather on the side of oversharing information than the opposite. Rust fills that gaping hole in my heart that Haskell opened a bit - not completely, but when it comes to $dayjob type of work, it feels somewhat similar (fight the compiler, but "when it compiles, it runs").
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    Do you ever code just for fun?
- tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  Personal anecdote: I got a lot more out of lisp that stuck with me than Haskell. Occasionally I say "oh this is a monad" or think about a type signature, but that's about it.
- medo-bear 2y ago
  Maybe Haskell is more like Bourbaki math, whereas Lisp is more like Russian style maths (ala Vladimir Arnold). I prefer the latter tbh, and I come to programming from a maths background. We are all different. Lisp to me is yet to be surpassed in terms of ergonomics when transfering my thoughts into computer code.
  - xanderlewis 2y ago
    Interesting. How would you characterise each (Bourbaki and Russian-style)?
    - medo-bear 2y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by characterize. Bourbaki-style is extremely rigorous, to the point of missing the forest for the trees. The so-called Russian style (there are plenty of non-Russian examples) is more driven toward building intuition and getting to the essence of the matter. In this way lisp is more similar to the latter because it facilitates prototype (essence) development. In Haskell you pretty much have to do a captcha equivalent of programming just to prove to the compiler you are allowed to do io :)
      - iLemming 2y ago
        That is a very interesting perspective of Haskell vs. Lisp., I don't come to programming from a math background, but I am Russian. Maybe that's why I always preferred Lisp-style instead of Haskell :)
        medo-bear 2y ago
        Maybe, I also see lisp as the slavic language of programming :)
        iLemming 2y ago
        Most obviously (from the linguistic's point) Lisp is Latin of programming languages. Has the similar historical importance; similar foundational role; continued relevance, elegance and power; evokes similar reactions from neophytes. From the point of Biology: Lisp is a prokaryotic cell - simple, fundamental, highly adaptable. In Chemistry: Lisp is carbon - versatile, forms the basis of complex structures. In Geology: Lisp is like bedrock - foundational and supporting diverse structures above it. In Astronomy: Lisp is a primordial star - ancient, influential, contributing to the formation of newer elements. In Physics: Lisp is a quark - the basis of all baryonic matter. </nerd-rant>
nxobject 2y ago
At the risk of diverging off from the original post, I also think that calling it "math" might make things a bit murky (and this is coming from someone who wanted to be algebraic topologist!) It _is_ an elegant and minimal expression of a style of programming that is ubiquitous among dynamically-typed, garbage-collected languages. And it's a "theory" in the sense that it seems complete, and that you can think of ways to solve problems into Scheme and translate that into other dynamically-typed languages and still end with an elegant solution. Emphasis on the elegant (since minimal, wart-free, consistent and orthogonal, etc.). Scheme was a simplification and a "cleaning up" compared to conventional Lisps of the time (lexical scoping, single shared namespace for functions and variables etc.)

Jeff_Brown 2y ago

Have you tried Haskell? It feels much closer to math to me. Definitions, not procedures. It even looks like math.

oaktowner 2y ago
No! After about 10 years of writing software professionally, I moved over to product management, and my time spent coding decreased drastically (in the last 15 years, only some Python to show my kids a thing or two). But I'd love to try! Maybe I'll take an online class for fun.
- Jeff_Brown 2y ago
  I can't recommend it highly enough. You're already familiar with laziness from Lisp, but purity is another head-trip. It made me a better programmer in any language, and even a better software architect before I've written a line of code. And algebraic data types make it possible to make your code conform to reality in ways that classes can't. Once you're exposed to them, it's very much like learning about addition after having been able to multiply for your whole life. (In fact that's more than a metaphor -- it's what's happening, in a category theoretic sense.) Haskell has other cool stuff too -- lenses, effect systems, recursion schemes, searching for functions based on their type signatures, really it's a very long list -- but I think laziness, purity and ADTs are the ones that really changed my brain for the better.
  - sourcepluck 2y ago
    Have you tried Coalton? It's a Common Lisp library that adds Haskell-esque (or near-Haskell) type wonders, and which smoothly interoperates with your Common Lisp code. Your comment is great though, consider me convinced. I've done a bit of messing with Lisp, but really would like to try write something in Haskell, or slog through a book or two, some day.
  - chamomeal 2y ago
    Damn that was a really good pitch. I think I’m too dumb to learn Haskell though lol. I’m struggling enough with immutability in clojure!!
    - eru 2y ago
      Haskell makes it easier, because immutability comes more natural there.
      - Jeff_Brown 2y ago
        I should have listed immutability as another thing that changed my brain for the better.
    - fredrikholm 2y ago
      > I think I’m too dumb to learn Haskell though lol. I felt the same way, a lot of people feel that way. This is in part because FP is difficult, typed FP is difficult, and Haskell is difficult. All by themselves. They do get easier once you intuit more and more FP in general I'd say. Then there's also a phenomena described in the Haskell Pyramid[0] where it sometimes appears more difficult than it really is. Like a lot of things, actually building something gets you a long way, esp. with the advent of chat AIs as it's comparatively easy to go back an fourth and learn little by little. [0] https://patrickmn.com/software/the-haskell-pyramid/ https://patrickmn.com/software/the-haskell-pyramid/
    - adelineJoOs 2y ago
      As someone with some experience in Haskell (although not an expert by any means): Haskell and some of its concepts are foreign to many people, but I think that it is actually easier to program in Haskell than in many other languages I know. At least for my ADHD brain ;) This impression can be changed somehow by the fact that Haskell and its community has two faces: There is the friendly, "stuff-just-works" and "oh-nice-look-at-these-easy-to-understand-and-usefull-abstractions" pragmatic Haskell that uses the vanilla Language without many extensions, and being written by people that solve some real-world problem by programming. Then there is the hardcore academic crowd - in my experience, very friendly, but heavily into mathematics, types and program language theory. They make use of the fact that Haskell is also a research language with many extensions that are someones PhD thesis. Which might also be the only documentation for that particular extension if you are unlucky. However, you can always ask - the community is rather on the side of oversharing information than the opposite. Rust fills that gaping hole in my heart that Haskell opened a bit - not completely, but when it comes to $dayjob type of work, it feels somewhat similar (fight the compiler, but "when it compiles, it runs").
- pmarreck 2y ago
  Do you ever code just for fun?
tightbookkeeper 2y ago
Personal anecdote: I got a lot more out of lisp that stuck with me than Haskell. Occasionally I say "oh this is a monad" or think about a type signature, but that's about it.
medo-bear 2y ago
Maybe Haskell is more like Bourbaki math, whereas Lisp is more like Russian style maths (ala Vladimir Arnold). I prefer the latter tbh, and I come to programming from a maths background. We are all different. Lisp to me is yet to be surpassed in terms of ergonomics when transfering my thoughts into computer code.
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  Interesting. How would you characterise each (Bourbaki and Russian-style)?
  - medo-bear 2y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by characterize. Bourbaki-style is extremely rigorous, to the point of missing the forest for the trees. The so-called Russian style (there are plenty of non-Russian examples) is more driven toward building intuition and getting to the essence of the matter. In this way lisp is more similar to the latter because it facilitates prototype (essence) development. In Haskell you pretty much have to do a captcha equivalent of programming just to prove to the compiler you are allowed to do io :)
    - iLemming 2y ago
      That is a very interesting perspective of Haskell vs. Lisp., I don't come to programming from a math background, but I am Russian. Maybe that's why I always preferred Lisp-style instead of Haskell :)
      - medo-bear 2y ago
        Maybe, I also see lisp as the slavic language of programming :)
        iLemming 2y ago
        Most obviously (from the linguistic's point) Lisp is Latin of programming languages. Has the similar historical importance; similar foundational role; continued relevance, elegance and power; evokes similar reactions from neophytes. From the point of Biology: Lisp is a prokaryotic cell - simple, fundamental, highly adaptable. In Chemistry: Lisp is carbon - versatile, forms the basis of complex structures. In Geology: Lisp is like bedrock - foundational and supporting diverse structures above it. In Astronomy: Lisp is a primordial star - ancient, influential, contributing to the formation of newer elements. In Physics: Lisp is a quark - the basis of all baryonic matter. </nerd-rant>

nxobject 2y ago

At the risk of diverging off from the original post, I also think that calling it "math" might make things a bit murky (and this is coming from someone who wanted to be algebraic topologist!) It _is_ an elegant and minimal expression of a style of programming that is ubiquitous among dynamically-typed, garbage-collected languages. And it's a "theory" in the sense that it seems complete, and that you can think of ways to solve problems into Scheme and translate that into other dynamically-typed languages and still end with an elegant solution. Emphasis on the elegant (since minimal, wart-free, consistent and orthogonal, etc.). Scheme was a simplification and a "cleaning up" compared to conventional Lisps of the time (lexical scoping, single shared namespace for functions and variables etc.)