Programming is like writing
From a comment on Slashdot: My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing. The vast majority of programming is not conceptually difficult (contrary to what a lot of people would ha…
SimAnt
I created a one-file GitHub repo over the weekend for a very trivial simulation I wanted to run. The Readme has more details, but it's basically a way to study the interaction between ants, food…
SDL on OSX
(ql:quickload 'lispbuilder-sdl) worked right away on an ubuntu box, but failed (couldn't find `cocoahelper) when I tried the sam on my Macbook. The fix is to install SDL, then go to ~/quickli…
Alan Kay: The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet
Watching this amazing video by Alan Kay, at OOPSLA 1998. It starts off fairly normal, with some reminiscing about Smalltalk, but then slowly spirals onward and upward, generating one BIG insight afte…
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However, given some massively inferior “tools”, you can get sufficient challenge and fun out of a day’s work that you never get your head above the water and see what is really going on: An industry-w…
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… you would realize at least one of several really uncomfortable things: (1) The way people store “information” in files is so approximate as to make you crazy, (2) Those who use databases usually do…
Hash table utilities
People have referred to the usage of hashtables in ANSI common lisp as archaic. This isn't necessarily true, but if you do feel this way there's no need to stick with it. Here's an example…
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Another nice thing about Suns is their simplicity. You know how a LispM is always jumping into that awful, hairy debugger with the confusing backtrace display, and expecting you to tell it how to proc…
Lisp is dead ? No, just lispers.
Came across this quote from the "Naggum-mine": Many Lisp programmers demand that sockets and multiprocessing should be standardized before they want to use it, which penalizes creativity li…
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The whole phone just seems so overloaded. Everything is bursting with functionality, but I don’t feel like discovering any of it. http://jacksonfish.com/2014/05/22/a-user-experience-designer-switches…
Rutils ?
I was excited to try this out when I came across it ... but it looks like (today!) the github repo is not in a compilable state, at least on Allegro CL. CL-USER(44): (ql:quickload 'rutils) To loa…
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… when a computer program beats a grandmaster at chess, the two are not using even remotely similar algorithms. The grandmaster can explain why it seemed worth sacrificing the knight for strategic adv…