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8:42:24
jackdaniel
I could risk an opinion, that so called "brainfuck" languages are useless hence worse than others
8:43:41
loke
Not all estoeric languages are useless. Unlambda is good for learning about the SKI combinators. Brainfuck is a toy, and quite fun. Others are not even useful for that. :-)
8:44:59
jack_rabbit
That's back to the argument over languages. Probably rather than trying to objectively judge languages, it's better to view them subjectively (which I think was jackdaniel's point)
8:45:52
jack_rabbit
There are a few factors that go into deciding what the best language is for a particular project. It's hard to compare languages on their own without these constraints.
8:50:48
flip214
there are different dimensions along which languages can be positioned. amount of syntax, extensibility, broadth of library ecosystem, etc.
8:51:52
flip214
for a quick and dirty text extraction I still like to use perl; but I wouldn't use it for anything that'll become more than 200 lines long.
9:10:39
aeth
brainfuck's use isn't that it's a fun toy, it's that it's one of the easiest to implement languages that's still "useful"
9:12:36
aeth
a lot of other esolangs are malicious on purpose (as parodies) and so are entirely useless for engineering. INTERCAL and Malbolge.
9:20:26
aeth
flip214 raises a good point about the length of a program. I wouldn't want to use bash for a program that's much more than a dozen lines, but for a bash program that's just a few lines, the equivalent in any other language is probably going to be hundreds. Structure can get in the way sometimes.
9:21:52
aeth
A simple shell script sort of thing in CL is probably a 50 line overhead, and that's *after* including UIOP.
9:23:14
flip214
but I wouldn't call /bin/sort for sorting a list in a 3kLOC C, Perl, or Lisp program.
9:23:27
holycow
that is a very good point. we just worked on a medium scale email migration project and i wondered if the dozen bash scrts could be done in other langages in such small code snippets
9:24:16
jack_rabbit
These are all constraints and considerations that lead one to an appropriate language choice, I think.
10:25:02
hlavaty
i find it strange, that puri is required by so many famous packages http://quickdocs.org/puri/ and this doesnt work. am i missing something?
12:11:07
cuso4
I want to define a scalar product with the following syntax (a . b), as it is often written on paper in the physics world.
12:15:59
cuso4
Also I know it would be much easier to write something like (. a b). But at the same time I thought it would be a fun excercise to make the notation (a . b).
12:24:25
jmercouris
also the difference between wirting (. a b) and (a . b) will not be significantly more challenging
12:25:15
flip214
jmercouris: that's a big difference. (¸ a b) needs nothing, (a ¸ b) at least an enclosing macro (or read-macro etc.)
12:26:15
cuso4
But anyway, I am looking more for what I sould google for to find examples of similar things
12:30:19
jmercouris
pointing you to specific concepts could help you solve this problem, but I think you should just learn about the language, and you'll figure out how to solve this problem relatively quickly
12:36:56
minion
cuso4: direct your attention towards pcl: pcl-book: "Practical Common Lisp", an introduction to Common Lisp by Peter Seibel, available at http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ and in dead-tree form from Apress (as of 11 April 2005).
12:37:46
cuso4
I know of that book, but I have an hour till I have to get back to studying and thought this would be a small and fun project.
12:40:24
jackdaniel
I think that you won't grok macros over the week (especially with this attitude), but I wish you that I'm mistaken
12:42:59
cuso4
Oh, I didn't mean that it is a bad book and that I am not planning to read it. It is just that I have exams this week.
12:43:36
jackdaniel
I'm not suggesting you say that, just noticing that you don't have time / you are reluctant to look in the literature
12:45:04
jackdaniel
add above statements and you end up with lack of the subject understanding on your exam
12:48:51
bnntt
Just wondering if anyone can recommend a good book for learning common lisp? I'm a CS student and want to learn it in my spare time
12:49:23
minion
bnntt: look at pcl: pcl-book: "Practical Common Lisp", an introduction to Common Lisp by Peter Seibel, available at http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ and in dead-tree form from Apress (as of 11 April 2005).
13:02:20
pjb
cuso4: (. a b) is not valid syntax. You would have to write (\. a b) or (|.| a b) ; once you escape the symbol named ".", you can also use it in infix position of you would like: (a \. b).
13:03:27
pjb
cuso4: alternatively, you can define a reader macro, for example, $ that would parse a LaTeX expression. $ a \cdot b $ --> (cdot a b)
19:45:05
phoe
Xach: I suggest you ask on the elsconf mailing list. If any place is established, it'll be established there.
20:27:09
Shinmera
jmercouris: Well, the "Colleen project". Colleen the bot here is currently running on Maiden: http://shirakumo.github.io/maiden/
20:29:56
Shinmera
Xach: I didn't find anything that was close, cheap, and a large hotel, which is a departure from previous years. Having a lispers hotel was quite nice.