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I like what they write about functional programming. "Functional Programming Long viewed as an important theoretical idea, functional programming finally beca
by klrr 13y ago
I like what they write about functional programming.
"Functional Programming
Long viewed as an important theoretical idea, functional programming finally became truly convenient and practical with the introduction of the Wolfram Language."
Not sure if anyone can take that seriously.
- sudont 13y agoSeems more like mathematician ego rather that Wolfram's ego. I see the same attitude in xkcd, for example. http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/ There was also a recent article on here about how programming is a dead-end, non-prestigious job in research circles. Sounds like a continuation of that sentiment.
- scott_s 13y agoRandall Munroe is making fun of that attitude in xkcd, not supporting it. He was a physicist at NASA, but has done a decent amount of programming.
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- sudont 13y agoFair enough. I do think it does make a good example of prevailing attitudes, regardless of whether the author has them.
- sp332 13y agoReally? I always read it as an endorsement.
- scott_s 13y agoThe science "stack" is something that, I think, most people agree exists. Just as it exists in technology. But I always read the comic as making fun of the feeling of superiority in being deeper down the stack.
- maaku 13y agoNo, not everyone does. Physicists, for example, are sometimes known to maintain that math is only human models approximating underlying physical substrates, and that pure / theoretical math is an artificial construction whose validation depends on finding physical manifestation of the theory. That would put experimental physicists to the right (above?) the mathematicians. But even if you did believe the mathematicians claim, by the same logic you would philosophy above them.
- scott_s 13y agoDisagreeing on the configuration is different than disagreeing on the existence.
- maaku 13y agoOk, I interpreted it wrongly. But I still don't agree. I've worked in academia and a NASA research center and never did I observe a respected scientist making such an observation. I know that's anecdotal evidence, but I don't know what else to fallback on. I always thought that the old tired line of "X is the core science!" was a trap that only mathematicians, physicists, and ignorant grad students fell into. I wasn't aware that any respected (and respectful) scientists actually took it seriously.
- scott_s 13y agoI think perhaps you're still thinking of a value judgement. To me, it is obvious that we have different fields of science for different scales. For example, there are many aspects of physics that a biologist takes for granted or doesn't even reason about when considering biological systems. They may need to reason about, say, chemistry from first principles. But I would be surprised for many biologists to have to apply much reasoning from quantum mechanics. Again, this is not a value judgement. A similar thing exists with computers. People who write web applications depend on user-application infrastructure, who depend on systems applications, which depend on operating systems, which depends on computer architecture, which depends on materials engineering and so on. As a systems programmer, I regularly reason about operating systems and computer architecture. But I never reason about the properties of the materials that make the hardware. The computer architects, though, may have to reason about the materials, as it can provide constraints to their designs.
- jballanc 13y agoRead the image alt text...
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- awef 13y agoWould you mind linking said article?
- xfax 13y agoWow, don't know if they are delusional or just wrong.
- scott_s 13y agoBack when he posted about trying to figure out what to name the language, I thought Ego would be perfect.
- jordigh 13y agoNot just that, he also seems to think that he invented Lisp's idea of code-as-data: "In most languages there’s a sharp distinction between programs, and data, and the output of programs. Not so in the Wolfram Language. It’s all completely fluid. Data becomes algorithmic. Algorithms become data. There’s no distinction needed between code and data." ( http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/11/13/something-very-big-is-coming-our-most-important-technology-project-yet/ http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/11/13/something-very-big-is-com... ) Kinda funny considering how the Mathematica language is built on top of the M-expressions that lisp never bothered to implement.
- msutherl 13y agoNote that this is marketing copy aimed at Mathematica users, mainly scientists and mathematicians, most of whom probably don't know what LISP or Haskell are.
- taliesinb 13y agoI think that's part of it. It's also aimed at non-hackers who took a look at Clojure once and said 'yuck'. And managers who are being 'groomed' not to totally freak out when someone on their team says "can we use the Wolfram Language on such and such a project?".
- lispm 13y agoLike RLISP, the implementation language of REDUCE?
- taliesinb 13y agoTo be fair, our brand of monotonicity is somewhat different from LISP's, as I've discussed before at length on HN.
- strmpnk 13y agoI assume you meant homoiconicity?
- taliesinb 13y agoYeah that's pretty bad.
- tokipin 13y agoi think that's a reference to the fact that Mathematica uses M-expressions and operator precedence. it doesn't look like lisp, but if you FullForm an expression you will see that it's all just M-expressions. that said, i think it is lisp-like as a design choice. the Mathematica language itself is more raw than even lisp -- you can take the language in different design directions. Wolfram chose to include lisp aspects