Right. Also:
> 2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.
Describes reading the description of an artwork at a Modern Art gallery pretty well
> 2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.
Describes reading the description of an artwork at a Modern Art gallery pretty well
Lisp has an abstract beauty in that it is a homoiconic language thought up as an intellectual exercise from a small number of basic rules and simple syntax.
The hidden meaning, which surprised even its creator at the time that he wrote "RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE", that a mathematical syntax should also be a fully implementable language to get a working interpreter, transforms the original paper into something even more beautiful and amazing than the original abstract beauty of the idea.
"The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty".
Edit: indeed, i think that one can apply to many instances of people who find programming languages and math aesthetically beautiful but also practical :P
That's the idealistic view. Also LISP was developed over some years, based on earlier languages for list processing (IPL, ...) and similar.
The paper 'RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE' was a presentation to a specific (more scientific) audience, while there were earlier and at the same time already 'real' language manuals published, which were concerned with less 'abstract' topics.
See for example:
http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/MIT/LISP_P...
Show white noise to an Imagenet CNN and it will give you a score for something.
Do you feel something if you see a landscape, portrait, or still life? Do you think they are still art? In a similar thread, if you stare at something abstract, if it draws you in to gaze on it because it is a cool design even if it brings forth no feeling, does it make it art or not?
Do you understand hidden meanings from 200 years ago that would have been obvious to viewers at the time? Do you still consider it art even if you have to read about the meanings built into the art?
(Art is full of pretentious bullshit, and I'm of the opinion that assigning meaning or requiring a meaning of art is, of itself, pretentious.)
That is not the same as having a meaning, though. For example, Mandelbrot set makes me feel "it is wonderful", but it doesn't need to have any meaning (technically, it is a solution to some equation, so it has meaning, but you don't have to know the meaning in order to feel that something).
Art is tricksome. It is what it is justified as being, but it's also just what it is.
I've found it easier over the years to just say that I like / dislike something, but my opinion isn't worth anything, and can happily be different to yours.
I guess I know it when I see it.