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Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)

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372 points Eric_WVGG | 5 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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kjellsbells ◴[16 Oct 24 15:32 UTC] No.41860281[source]▶
Regardless of your opinion on the utility of Lisp, this is an exemplary piece of writing. Crisp, engaging, informative.

God I miss old Scientific American. Today's SA isn't especially terrible, but old SA, like old BYTE, was reliably enlightening.

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1. sgustard ◴[16 Oct 24 15:45 UTC] No.41860442[source]▶
The title of his column and book "Metamagical Themas" is an anagram of Martin Gardner's previous column "Mathematical Games". It's clever wordplay turtles all the way down.
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2. madcaptenor ◴[16 Oct 24 16:30 UTC] No.41861022[source]▶
Other Hofstadter book titles with wordplay:

- Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (you have GEB/EGB, and I guarantee you he noticed those notes form a musical triad)

- Metamagical Themas (anagram of Mathematical Games)

- Le Ton beau de Marot (I don't have my copy at hand, but "ton beau" is surely a pun on "tombeau" meaning "tomb")

- The Mind's I (editor) (I = eye)

- That Mad Ache (translation of "La chamade" by Francoise Sagan; "mad ache" is an anagram of "chamade")

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3. gjm11 ◴[16 Oct 24 17:25 UTC] No.41861528[source]▶
"tombeau" literally means "tomb", but the term also sometimes means "piece written as a memorial", like Ravel's piano suite "Le Tombeau de Couperin". And yes, Hofstadter explicitly links "ton beau" with "tombeau" (he doesn't explicitly mention the "memorial" meaning, though when he mentions the literal "tombeau de Marot" he is talking specifically about the epitaph on it) and also with "tome beau", the great book of Marot's life and work.

I'd find it a cleverer bit of wordplay if "le ton beau de ..." itself didn't feel clumsy. Surely it would always be "le beau ton de ..."?

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4. madcaptenor ◴[16 Oct 24 17:55 UTC] No.41861808{3}[source]▶
This was all somewhere in the back of my head but my copy of this book is in my parents' basement somewhere. I'll have to rescue it so I can keep it in my basement.
5. shrubble ◴[16 Oct 24 21:18 UTC] No.41863941[source]▶
At least one of the covers of GEB specifically had artwork that shows GEB/EGB : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach