grosales

My condolences. May Greg rest in peace and you find solace in the memories you have of him.

An excerpt from The Dream Machine:

"As a Lisp programmer continued to link simpler functions into more complex ones, he or she would eventually reach a point where the whole program was a function-which, of course, would also be just another list.. So to execute that program, the programmer would simply give a command for the list to evaluate itself in the context of all the definitions that had gone before, And in a truly spectacular exercise in self-reference, it would do precisely that. In effect, such a list provided the purest possible embodiment of John von Neumann's original conception of a stored program: it was both data and executable code, at one and the same time

In Mathematics, the technical name for this sort of thing is recursive function theory, which was why McCarthy called his first public description of Lisp 'Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation By Machine' Today ranked as one of the most influential documents in the history of computer languages, that paper established that a language could have a rigorous mathematical foundation. And it signified that John McCarthy had finally come up with a framework that was precise enough, rigorous enough, and compelling enough to satisfy even him"

His paper can be found here: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.pdf

I am just amazed how often his name appears on this book (the first time he is mentioned, Waldrop talks about how strange people said he is). But in my book he will always be a legend and a visionary.

PSA for Linux Users Download gnome-do http://do.davebsd.com/

This is awesome! I have it in my wish list ready to buy as soon as It's out. I'll also make sure to be in the next Fringe DC meeting.

I think you have a valid analogy of Lisp to Linux, but you you should finish the PG book before you make any final judgment. The power of Lisp comes from its "simplicity", its extensions, and the magical Aha moment you get while coding in Lisp (it's like obtaining zen only to realize new and bigger doors have opened before you and there is a vast ocean of new knowledge to gain) - the Aha moment is rather special, to the point that I don't know how to describe it, that's why you should try to have it yourself. Like other comments have mentioned, Scheme and CL have different purposes (Scheme is mostly used in academia and is very simplistic while CL was geared to enterprises mostly). I really don't know why Lisp flavor wars arise, I suppose is the price we pay for being among passionate people, it can hold back a technology for sure, but if that war can be turned into a logical debate of merits, great things can come out. On that note, I do like Windows 7 a lot, but I will stick to Linux because I have learned so much (shell scripting, network administration, socket programming) ever since I started using it that it's not even funny, and there is some fun in being able to fix something yourself instead of having to report a bug to MS and wait for them to fix it.

I'd try to use similar analogies to the examples that _why used at the Art && Code Symposium (the examples would be those used in Hackety Hack). http://www.vimeo.com/5047563

Professor Luke, I had the privilege of taking your AI class, which was the most interesting and fun CS class I took while in college. You are an outstanding professor. Thanks for the book!

Have fun - probably going to get obliterated for saying this - but, give a quick read to "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman" so you can realize that, more than anybody, really smart people always need to have fun.

It's good that you want to get good at hacking. Working on Open Source projects every once in a while will help you with that.

Learn to be disciplined about studying. Study hard but not harder - only you know what hard means, or you will have to learn.

Take time to learn something else besides hacking, maybe dance, or play an instrument, I don't know, maybe painting.

Use at least one summer to travel abroad, it will give you perspective.

Try to get along with the professors that you find are the best at teaching, maybe do some research with them. You might learn more than you think from them.

Finally, I will repeat it again, have fun more than anything. Make college a series of memories and not just one big race to the finish line trying to get good grades. I've said it before and I will say it again, the goal of college should be to help you become a well-rounded individual with knowledge that its balanced between different topics, not just computer science.

Manassas, Virginia USA.

You could start with Mathematics: A very short introduction by Timothy Gowers. It's a quick read, and the way Gowers writes about important Mathematical topics is interesting and, for the most part, easy to understand. http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Short-Introduction-Timothy...

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop. It's a very fun, easy, and interesting read of the origins of modern computing, the people who worked day and night to make their vision a reality, and the passion that carried their dreams to reality (the book, besides mentioning Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, also names people from Grace Hopper to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates).

If you are miserable, it's really that simple. Just do it. Everybody is unique, and it's your fault your friends cannot find a job. It will be your fault if you keep being miserable. You hold all the cards.

Lexico seems cool, might have to try it out.

All the best to you Paul, your wife, and your beautiful new baby!

show "Congratulations!"

Congrats Paul, wish you the best! How long are you going to wait 'til you start teaching him/her lisp?

...the Aji (pronounced ah-hee), a Peruvian chili, which "ripens to bright yellow, with a strong lemony taste when fresh, very zesty. When dried it picks up a banana flavour."

Being peruvian, I am just a bit biased, but the Aji Peper just tastes great with anything. I remember Sundays back home when my mother 'd cook a simple chicken soup to which I would add some Aji and make the perfect soup. Something so simple, yet so good. It is a taste I have never had again outside of Peru.

I like the humble part., surprisingly the best coders I have met are very humble. You should also mention to contribute to open source projects when they have some free time and to learn from their coding mistakes. Emphasize more the "Don't blow off your non-CS/ECE/EE classes!", this is an important point, not only because it can lower your grade, but I believe, because it makes a well rounded person. If you are well rounded, you will learn why it's not so good to be hacking away in front of a monitor for 30 hours straight (even though it's fun), and that your health, above all, is the most important thing. Also building up mental discipline is key, every project has some fun things and boring things; discipline will help them to get through the boring things so they can enjoy doing the fun things later on and finish the project, there is no point in starting something if you are not going to finish it. Just my 2 cents.

The ecoomics department is probably the best dpt that GMU has. I also went there, but I studied CS. I was a fairly decent student and I met other good students. If you would have stuck and taken the advanced CS classes like AI, Computer Vision, Compiler languages or Operative systems you might have gotten a glimpse of the hackers at GMU. I don't consider myself a hacker, but I do love coding. I never even dreamed of working for Booz Allen, but I don't see anything wrong with that idea either. There were some hackers there though, like the guy who coded and came up with Plasma Pong (it was later shutdown by Atari I think), and I think another guy who wrote RoadBlocks, the math department also had some really smart people. Apart from some Associate professors I think that the CS department has some really outstanding faculty like Sean Luke, Elizabeth White, Zoran Duric and I also heard professor Hamburger was awesome before he retired, I learned a lot from them (actually I never would have learned of hacker news if it wasn't for Professor Luke).

I might be able to help you out (I wouldn't be doing the translating, but I know a couple of hispanic college students who are just starting their winter break and might be interested). Send me an email at grosales at gmu dot edu

I like the old design better, it seemed cleaner and more elegant. Some sites (like the one this news point to) render horrible in IE7. Also, I don't want to be a rockstar; I'd rather be an indie rock dude.

Thank you for creating the list. Real name: Gary Rosales