mikelevins

9 ms·

31.
by mikelevins 2y ago
For decades I've wanted a ubiquitous computing system. A couple of times I've thought that I was getting close, but no; those mirages disappeared. Maybe something in this vein could do the job eventually. If it has to depend on th
32.
by mikelevins 2y ago
"Pragmatic" connotes a choice that achieves a goal by practical means, possibly sacrificing some desirable features that are challenging to achieve. "Expedient" connotes a choice that achieves a goal quickly and convenie
33.
by mikelevins 2y ago
Yep. I wrote bard, a Lisp that combines features of Dylan, Common Lisp, and pure-functional languages purely as a long-running experiment in what I could do to make programming more fun for myself. I subsequently used two versions of it in
34.
by mikelevins 2y ago
I got one a year or two ago from Detroit Modular for about $1500. I've been very happy with it. I'm primarily a guitar player with some ability to muddle through on piano on simple parts if I have to. The Linnstrument feels to me
35.
by mikelevins 2y ago
The first time I attempted a Lisp back in about 1989 or something, I used the metacircular evaluator from SICP. A little later I used Norvig's Scheme implementation from chapters 22 and 23 of PAIP ( https://norvig.github.io&#
36.
by mikelevins 3y ago
I was part of a gaming group in the 1980s that played Diplomacy on custom maps that we made (my wife worked for USGS Map Sales, which gave us access to a lot of nice maps) and some other games. We also had Nomic in the rotation. My experien
37.
by mikelevins 3y ago
The mouse ain't the problem. Once I was fast and precise, with sharp close vision. Now I'm not. Enjoy your capabilities while you have them. Decline awaits us all.
38.
by mikelevins 3y ago
I don't think it's that simple. There are too many variables. It's probably different for each person and depends on a host of health-related things. It's probably also different for the same person at different stages o
39.
by mikelevins 3y ago
I think I agree with everything you've said here, but I want to offer a caution to those who pursue hard work that is fun. I've worked in all permutations of your descriptions. If I believe in a project and can get good results on
40.
by mikelevins 3y ago
Imagine working on a networked system that uses types to make it impossible to express operations that violate data security and integrity constraints, and where such constraints control whether data is allowed to be read or written from or
41.
by mikelevins 3y ago
See, for example, KAOS (Killing as an Organized Sport), also known as Killer or Assassin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_(game) ). It’s a multiplayer game in which players LARP as assassins out to kill targets t
42.
by mikelevins 3y ago
It least your Slack channels didn't include employees pasting in porn GIFs to comment on the clients who were currently in meetings with the commenter. I quit that job the second week.
43.
by mikelevins 3y ago
"My friend, it happens to everyone." Indeed. When you were typing in your first BASIC program, my younger daughter was two years old.
44.
by mikelevins 3y ago
It means that poetry is a use of language that is exceptional in some way. If everyone can do it then it's no longer exceptional and the word loses its meaning.
45.
by mikelevins 3y ago
Agreed. It's easier to learn how to do practical programming with CLOS from Keene's book. AMOP is more useful for those who want to know more about how things work under the hood, or who maybe want to build their own implementatio
46.
by mikelevins 3y ago
They probably meant prizes. They seem to be in favor of mocking people for being wrong. I don't agree. It'll result in a great deal more mockery than I have any use for.
47.
by mikelevins 3y ago
Also fair points. In Bard I’ve been willing to pay that cost because exploring types that are defined by protocol was one of the motivating reasons for working on it.
48.
by mikelevins 3y ago
Point taken, but I feel like I should explain that the word "class" has an idiosyncratic meaning in Bard. Bard classes are not conventional object-oriented classes; they aren't even CLOS-style classes. A Bard class is a set o
49.
by mikelevins 3y ago
Associating expressions with source location info is a cost that we bear only when processing source code. If we shoehorn it into conses, then there is some nonzero cost to all cons cell processing, whether we are scanning code or not. Th
50.
by mikelevins 3y ago
There's a decent argument for keeping such a foundational data structure as simple as possible, but there's also a decent argument for not making it too simple. Cons cells are certainly very simple. They're so simple that,
51.
by mikelevins 3y ago
I did not intend to classify Clojure as "not a Lisp". I didn't intend to comment on Clojure at all, specifically, so commenting on this particular thread was an ill-conceived choice on my part. I wanted to describe the source
52.
by mikelevins 3y ago
Common Lisp uses cons cells. So do a bunch of older Lisps whose design fed into the design of Common Lisp. That's all. There's nothing else special about cons cells in my mind. Cons cells are not the important point--at least not
53.
by mikelevins 3y ago
There are some other explanations given in sibling comments. They may be right, but there's another point that may also explain some of this sentiment. In Common Lisp and its antecedents, a "list" is a chain of cons cells, as
54.
by mikelevins 3y ago
I'm a Lisper. One of my good friends at Apple was a hardcore FORTH guy. I had other friends there that were Lisp or Smalltalk enthusiasts. We got along great. The early meetings at Apple for the design of the Dylan language definitely
55.
by mikelevins 3y ago
"With great power comes great responsibility." In Spider-Man's origin story one of the first things that happens after he gains his powers is that he tries to make some money as a masked wrestler. A guy robs the box office at
56.
by mikelevins 3y ago
In general, building programs interactively by changing them as they run. That's the default, normal way to write programs in certain languages (notably in Common Lisp and its antecedents and in Smalltalk). In such languages, you want
57.
by mikelevins 4y ago
It was written by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvy_Ray_Smith
58.
by mikelevins 4y ago
A friend of mine from Apple, a capable programmer who wrote one version of Apple's linker and also some books and libraries for Modula 2, left software development in the 90s and became a full-time painter and distiller, as well as a p
59.
by mikelevins 4y ago
I have no plans to retire, both because a major health event scuttled my original plans, and because retirement wouldn't have a large effect on how I live, anyway. If circumstances arise in which I decide that retirement is a good opti
60.
by mikelevins 4y ago
If the Lisp way of thinking about and solving problems is a good fit for you, then you should learn it because it will make you happier and more productive. If not, then don't bother. That's a Catch-22, of course. How will you kno

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