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I have briefly looked at Arc. It is yet another demonstration of the problem of too strong an ego that cannot live with what somebody else has made. Be it the standard conditionals, nil versus false…
Propagating, artfully
Just came across [this paper] today, and it was super-interesting. (I’m assuming the title is a reference to [an earlier one] by Steele and Sussman). You can read the abstract, or [watch Sussman talk…
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A common analogy for a resistor is a pipe that carries water. The water itself is analogous to electrical charge, the pressure at the input of the pipe is similar to voltage, and the rate of flow of t…
File paths ...
... Seem standardized now, but this was not always so. Here (from cltl2) is the range of ways of specifying a "pathname" that were typical on different systems about 25 years ago. Obviously…
Baktoo: Taking baby steps with generative art
Continuing (or stumbling) along a path to using Common Lisp for stuff I consider fun, I came up with this. As mentioned in the `README`, I need to work on making this more efficient. Stuff I learned…
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…