freenode/#lisp - IRC Chatlog
Search
2:35:01
beach
sea: No, there is not predefined printed representation for specialized array. You would have to invent your own.
2:37:21
Kevslinger
Indeed. We left Marbella Wednesday morning, and arrive in Philadelphia Wednesday late afternoon.
2:39:20
Kevslinger
The day we left, Philly was very warm. During ELS, it snowed in Philly. This morning, it was very cold, then in the afternoon it was beautifully warm, and now tonigh it is cold again. This weekend is projected to be wonderful, though, so I am looking forward to that.
2:45:51
Colleen
Weather in Philadelphia: Clear at 6°C (feels like 4°C), 48% humidity, 2km/h wind, 1029hPa pressure.
2:53:44
Kevslinger
That is truly unbelievable. The humidity of Pennsylvania is one of my least favorite parts about it. Couldn't imagine even more water in the air
7:44:20
verisimilitude
So, what are you all working on lately; with regards to Lisp, I've been primarily concerned with my ACUTE-TERMINAL-CONTROL abstract terminal library.
10:35:32
light2yellow
I'm reading http://paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html and I cannot evaluate a lambda passed as an argument to another lambda on page 4: ((lambda (f) (f '(b c))) '(lambda (x) (cons 'a x))). it should yield (a b c) but instead slime 2.20 & sbcl 1.4.6 provide two "style-warning"s and abort with "function f is undefined". why so? I can do (lambda (x) (* x x) 5) normally, for example
10:38:55
phoe
light2yellow: Graham, in his paper, describes a so-called Lisp 1, where functions and variables share a single namespace.
10:39:25
phoe
In Common Lisp, the value of variable F and the function F are distinct; Common Lisp is a lisp-2.
10:39:42
MichaelRaskin
But Common Lisp is Lisp-2, so you need an explicit funcall to call a value as a function
10:41:34
MichaelRaskin
Right, Common Lisp _also_ wants you to wrap (function …) around the list to recognise that this actually describes a function
10:46:07
phoe
light2yellow: a good choice of article though, I used that one to implement a half-working minimal Lisp in Haskell.
10:50:53
light2yellow
phoe: I need to write something 10-page long about lisp (without further specification, literally), so I'm just trying to wrap my head around it first
10:53:26
phoe
light2yellow: good idea! You can also fire up some sort of Lisp IDE and fiddle around with it while reading some sort of very introductory book.
10:53:56
phoe
https://portacle.github.io/ and http://gigamonkeys.com/book/lather-rinse-repeat-a-tour-of-the-repl.html are a good choice, except use Portacle and not Lisp-In-A-Box.
10:54:34
phoe
And once you're done with this chapter, go straight to http://gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-a-simple-database.html
11:06:00
phoe
if you already evaluate expressions in CL, it means you already have some sort of implementation installed.
11:06:23
light2yellow
phoe: thank you for the recommendations. I'm using spacemacs with slime as a repl, and scrolled through few chapters of that book (including the mentioned ones). however, it's more important to me to understand why lisp was/is an important idea, why and in what way it was/is revolutionary, what have its dialects brought etc., than to know how to do something in particular, so I'm reading more "analysis"
11:09:28
phoe
well, Lisp was revolutionary because it introduced concepts like IF/THEN/ELSE, first-class functions, recursion, GC, image-based programming, homoiconicity et cetera
11:09:51
phoe
most of which have now made their way into other languages, so that's a successful revolution.
11:10:47
jdz
light2yellow: I'd suggest this: http://www.restlessdevice.com/e02-lisp-learning-to-think-about-thinking/
11:11:15
jdz
light2yellow: And maybe also http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/lisp-as-the-maxwells-equations-of-software/ (just because the title seems relevant).
11:12:47
phoe
MichaelRaskin: AFAIR McCarthy implemented it first in Lisp and then it made its way into Fortran right afterwards
11:14:34
MichaelRaskin
For a safer bet one could talk about the full language being available at compile-time for code transformation
11:16:29
light2yellow
MichaelRaskin: I read it in one of the papers few days ago and can confirm if-then-else is first introduced in lisp