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Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)

(gist.github.com)
372 points Eric_WVGG | 11 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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oaktowner ◴[16 Oct 24 17:00 UTC] No.41861304[source]▶
I just love his writing so much -- he captures what I felt when I discovered Lisp. As a kid learning programming in the 80s, I had already done some BASIC, Fortran, Pascal and COBOL in high school and early college. There were differences, of course, but they had some fundamental commonality.

At UC Berkeley, however, the first computer science class was taught in Scheme (a dialect of Lisp)...and it absolutely blew me away. Hofstadter is right: it feels the closest to math (reminding me a ton of my math theory classes). It was the first beautiful language I discovered.

(edit: I forgot to paste in the quote I loved!)

"...Lisp and Algol, are built around a kernel that seems as natural as a branch of mathematics. The kernel of Lisp has a crystalline purity that not only appeals to the esthetic sense, but also makes Lisp a far more flexible language than most others."

replies(2): >>41863008 #>>41863500 #
Jeff_Brown ◴[16 Oct 24 19:40 UTC] No.41863008[source]▶
Have you tried Haskell? It feels much closer to math to me. Definitions, not procedures. It even looks like math.
replies(3): >>41863350 #>>41865297 #>>41867173 #
medo-bear ◴[17 Oct 24 07:13 UTC] No.41867173[source]▶
Maybe Haskell is more like Bourbaki math, whereas Lisp is more like Russian style maths (ala Vladimir Arnold). I prefer the latter tbh, and I come to programming from a maths background. We are all different. Lisp to me is yet to be surpassed in terms of ergonomics when transfering my thoughts into computer code.
replies(1): >>41870042 #
xanderlewis ◴[17 Oct 24 14:31 UTC] No.41870042[source]▶
Interesting. How would you characterise each (Bourbaki and Russian-style)?
replies(1): >>41872943 #
1. medo-bear ◴[17 Oct 24 19:29 UTC] No.41872943[source]▶
I'm not sure what you mean by characterize. Bourbaki-style is extremely rigorous, to the point of missing the forest for the trees. The so-called Russian style (there are plenty of non-Russian examples) is more driven toward building intuition and getting to the essence of the matter. In this way lisp is more similar to the latter because it facilitates prototype (essence) development. In Haskell you pretty much have to do a captcha equivalent of programming just to prove to the compiler you are allowed to do io :)
replies(2): >>41874008 #>>41875344 #
2. iLemming ◴[17 Oct 24 21:30 UTC] No.41874008[source]▶
That is a very interesting perspective of Haskell vs. Lisp., I don't come to programming from a math background, but I am Russian. Maybe that's why I always preferred Lisp-style instead of Haskell :)
replies(1): >>41876840 #
3. xanderlewis ◴[18 Oct 24 00:49 UTC] No.41875344[source]▶
I mean what it usually means: to list distinguishing features, or at least give (necessary and sufficient?) criteria for membership of some class.

Whilst I'm vaguely familiar with Bourbaki and how it strongly influenced the way mathematics is written today, I hadn't come across that dichotomy before. Your answer was what I was looking for!

4. medo-bear ◴[18 Oct 24 06:28 UTC] No.41876840[source]▶
Maybe, I also see lisp as the slavic language of programming :)
replies(1): >>41880344 #
5. iLemming ◴[18 Oct 24 15:30 UTC] No.41880344{3}[source]▶
Most obviously (from the linguistic's point) Lisp is Latin of programming languages. Has the similar historical importance; similar foundational role; continued relevance, elegance and power; evokes similar reactions from neophytes.

From the point of Biology: Lisp is a prokaryotic cell - simple, fundamental, highly adaptable.

In Chemistry: Lisp is carbon - versatile, forms the basis of complex structures.

In Geology: Lisp is like bedrock - foundational and supporting diverse structures above it.

In Astronomy: Lisp is a primordial star - ancient, influential, contributing to the formation of newer elements.

In Physics: Lisp is a quark - the basis of all baryonic matter.

</nerd-rant>

replies(2): >>41882610 #>>41901617 #
6. medo-bear ◴[18 Oct 24 19:24 UTC] No.41882610{4}[source]▶
I would say in physics, lisp is like the formulation of physical laws in terms of lagrangians and hamiltonians - ie it is the least action principle
replies(1): >>41883462 #
7. iLemming ◴[18 Oct 24 21:02 UTC] No.41883462{5}[source]▶
Here's a hard one. In political science Lisp would be like...?
replies(2): >>41886366 #>>41887144 #
8. ◴[19 Oct 24 07:56 UTC] No.41886366{6}[source]▶
9. medo-bear ◴[19 Oct 24 11:09 UTC] No.41887144{6}[source]▶
Juche ?
10. kazinator ◴[21 Oct 24 07:34 UTC] No.41901617{4}[source]▶
The difference is that it's not the case that a majority of chemists are ignorant about carbon, or geologists about bedrock, or astronomers about primordial stars or physicists about quarks.

Lisp is like an entire branch of computer science, about which a lot of people in computer science are ignorant.

replies(1): >>41905125 #
11. iLemming ◴[21 Oct 24 15:18 UTC] No.41905125{5}[source]▶
Allow me to gently disagree. Most computer scientists I know are not ignorant about Lisp. Some scholars consider computer science a branch of mathematics, while others avoid such broad generalizations, as modern computer science has evolved into a broader discipline.

It's just that the majority of modern programmers are not concerned with mathematics, and that's perfectly acceptable. Mathematics itself has so many different levels that even mathematicians themselves are not always certain if they are indeed practicing mathematics.

You may be conflating programmers and computer scientists, but this could also be a perfect case of selection bias, where both of us are simultaneously correct and incorrect in our assertions.