daly

False and misleading? The chosen languages have changed the way I've thought about programming. In my 'lived experience', Lisp is 'THE language' of thought. I'd welcome your choice of language and why you think it deeply affects the way you program.

I've used 'lisp' since 1970, in a FORTRAN implementation of Lisp 1.5 out of Bell Labs. Clearly 'lisp' has evolved since that time. But all versions I've used, like MacLisp, Symbolics, Interlisp, Lisp/370, VMLISP, CCL/MCL, Portable Standard Lisp, KCL, AKCL (I'm a minor author), Emacs Lisp, CLISP, Lucid, Gold Hill, ABCL, Clojure, and a few others I've probably forgotten. They are all 'different' but all are recognizably 'lisp'.

I don't know AutoLisp but I suspect that it might have the 'clay-like' property of other 'lisps'.

The point of this series is to find languages that change the way you think.

Don't confuse an implementation with the concepts.

IBM introduced the RS/6000 "workstation" computer.

We got a memo that said not to use 'RS' in the name.

Apparently in the U.S. the use of 'BS' for Bullshit has Australian equivalent of 'RS' for Ratshit. Thus, the RatShit/6000 was born.

I found it funny but apparently the Marketing people didn't.

Use blank for dot and tab for space.

Then your morse code is "invisible" and you can put it anywhere.

When you present peer-reviewed evidence for a lab-leak, please post it.

For expert opinion on this subject listen to actual virologists. They do a podcast about 2-3 times a week.

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

I'm confused. The article states:

Fructose, for example, appears to damage insulin sensitivity and liver function more than other sweeteners with the same number of calories.

but:

(https://foodinsight.org/what-is-fructose/) Fructose is also known as “fruit sugar” because it primarily occurs naturally in many fruits. It also occurs naturally in other plant foods such as honey, sugar beets, sugar cane and vegetables.

and the article specifically recommends eating more fruit and vegetables.

Make the "chain of command" sign a document authorizing the use of an armed robot. If the robot kills someone then everyone in the chain of command is held liable and charged as though they pulled the trigger.

Management has always taken my estimates, put them in a drawer, and then blamed me when the estimate was wrong.

Of course, they ignore the fact that the requirements changed during the project every single time.

That said, every project I've ever worked on was "new ground" and had never been done before. Musk can estimate how long it will take to make the next Tesla but might have a bit of trouble estimating the opening of the first Mars colony.

There was a posting about estimating that talked about walking in California. It was perfect. Can't find it again though.

I ran a small data center, used to qualify backbone routers.

We had a Halon fire system. If there was a fire you exit the center and press the Halon button. The fire dies.

I can't understand how a multi-story, super-expensive, data center didn't have effective fire control. It makes no sense.

In 50 years of programming I've never, ever seen a project that met estimates.

I did see a 5 month, 5 person, fixed cost contract take 18 months, 10 persons, and sank the company.

Never, ever, try to estimate software projects.

Actually, it should be Lisp.

Literate Programming Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDlzE9yy1mk

I've been writing literate programs for years

Here is a video showing a literate form of Clojure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDlzE9yy1mk

The literate program creates a new PDF and a working version of Clojure, including running a test suite. If you change the literate code and type 'make' it re-makes the PDF with the new changes and rebuilds/retests Clojure.

and here is the source:

https://github.com/robleyhall/clojure-small-pieces

Lisp in Small Pieces

Physically Based Rendering

Both books are outstanding examples of readable literate programs.

I was the person who got the VAL language from Victor Scheinman and Bruce Shimano at Unimation.

I wonder what version you are running. I made several modifications to the original code.

Rodney,

I worked at Unimation when Vic Scheinman came to demonstrate his robot to myself, Maury Dunne, and Bill Perzley.

Vic set up the robot and the computer. The robot started, typed some words, and typed a command to stop itself. I took an 8mm video of his visit. I sent it to him about a year before he died. (I wonder who has it now).

Vic's arm failed while he was there. One of the motors died. He sent me out for some wire. Then he built a new motor from scratch on the Bridgeport in our lab. I was completely impressed.

Vic was later hired to design the Puma. His desk was next to mine.

I got the VAL language from Vic and Bruce Shimano. I modified and extended it to drive our Unimate from a PDP-11/03. It also drove the 2 arm robot for Ford.

Richard (Lou) Paul was at SRI using a Unimate. He taught myself and Bill Perzley how to use DH-Matrices and the Jacobian for robots. I extended VAL to use some of that math.

Later, at IBM Research (with Russ Taylor and others), we worked on AML, the robot used to drive the IBM robot. I worked on the vision subsystem (Gold Filling) and a multi-address space linking loader. I also added networking to link it to the Boca robot. Ralph Hollis left the group and all of that robot work went with him to Carnegie Mellon. I worked at CMU and visited Ralph often.

I researched a "design-to-buid system". The idea is to start with a CAD drawing of an assembly and automatically construct a robot plan to build it. This was used to assemble a flashlight, driven from AML.

Later still, I worked with Scott Fahlman on Robot-Human cooperation to change a car tire. We used a mashup of Scone (Scott's Knowledge base), a modified version of Forgy's RETE algorithm for rules, a modified form of Alice's natural language, machine learning (to recognize lug nuts), and a custom feedback system to dynamically learn new rules and knowledge from interacting with the human.

These days all of my robot work is in ROS.

Tim

And you don't find that fun?

Not music... cooking. Write a recipe. It's the same as code.

To bake a cake you need explicit instructions, including time, temperature, and exact ingredients.

You need 'subroutines' for things like icing, which is another recipe.

And when you write a recipe for me, it is not sufficient to say "stir"... you need to say what the stopping condition is. The stopping condition has to be 'measurable'. For example, I can't cook hamburger because I can't tell when "all of the red" is gone (I'm color blind to red-green).

There are 'user interface' issues... cake decorating.

Plus if someone find out that your 'cake' is over a month old, they are sure to insist it needs to be 'redone', just like real code.

If you know what you want to do and there is not much thinking needed, use CLojure.

Otherwise, use Common Lisp.

I want an 8x1/2 by 11 (standard US paper size) screen area device for reading PDFs. So far I haven't found one. It should have high dpi so I can read graphs embedded in papers. It should handle the new terabyte micro cards.

I don't need network access. I don't need writing. I don't need color.

Someday somebody will make one.

Literate Programming

Quite a lot, actually.

Polynomials can be easily manipulated, such as taking a derivative, and the result is still valid executable code.

Macros use homoiconicity all the time, doing code walking and code expansion.

Functions can construct and return functions easily.

I suffer from the same thing. I recently opened a text editor, copied all the URLs, and closed the tabs.

Some of the tabs were PDFs so I downloaded them and saved them. There were 89, averaging about 20 pages (some were books). Rounding up to 90, that's about 1800 pages. I read about 33 pages an hour (yeah, I did measure it), that turns out to be 1800 / 30 or 60 hours of reading, ignoring the other tabs. I need to hire people to read for me.

You mean that knowing how to "show source" for a webpage is a key skill? Sigh.

You should contact PlusAI. Their self-driving truck drove across the country by itself. Putting them into a "convoy" of trucks essentially makes them into a "land train".

This problem isn't unique to programming. Russian mathematicians do amazing work, none of which I can access because I can't read Russian.

Even if the text is in English and you have a degree in mathematics I suspect that any text in logic these days is unreadable, despite being "in english". I've seen whole papers that are 90% judgement forms. It has taken me years to be able to read these papers.

There are more english-speaking people in China than there are english-speaking people in the US. I worked with several Chinese people who knew more about English syntax that I do.

It is a mistake to believe that programs written "in english" are readable. I have many programs I cannot understand (some of which I've written). I read and write mathematical software and have to study a lot of background before I can understand how a 20 line program works.

PlusAI drove a truck across the country without intervention.

https://plus.ai/Plus-ai-Completes-First-Cross-Country-Commer...

Tesla needs to up its game.

If you do something truly amazing you MIGHT get an honorary PhD.

But the PhD isn't all about the research you do. In fact, most PhD research is ignored. The PhD is training for doing independent research.

If you can already do independent research why do you need a degree? Isn't the pursuit of knowledge reason enough to do the research?

OS: Ubuntu 14.04.1 Processor Intel Core 2 Duo Memory 2Gb Storage 120G

Lenovo T61 (2007)

I use it for system builds for my open source project.

and put it in a "Piper Cub" airplane, calling it "the Pied Piper"?