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Everything Is Just Functions: 1 week with David Beazley and SICP

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389 points kurinikku | 1 comments | 17 Nov 24 15:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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Animats ◴[17 Nov 24 19:08 UTC] No.42166199[source]▶
"Everything is just" approaches usually result in hammering things that don't fit into fitting. That often ends badly. Computing has been through, at least:

- Everything is just a function (SICP)

- Everything is just an object (Smalltalk, and to some extent Java)

- Everything is just a closure (the original Common LISP object system)

- Everything is just a file of bytes (UNIX)

- Everything is just a database (IBM System/38, Tandem)

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Maxatar ◴[17 Nov 24 19:11 UTC] No.42166225[source]▶
None of the things you mention ended badly though. I think all of those approaches you list are incredibly useful and important concepts and I am very happy that I not only know them, but that because of how universal they are I can leverage my knowledge of one approach to learn or apply another approach.
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1. hobs ◴[17 Nov 24 21:42 UTC] No.42167565[source]▶
I would go further and say that each one of these were so useful that they presented entirely new sets of problems to attempt to solve, because of how many other problems they directly addressed.

It's like being mad that hammer was so successful we invented screw to improve on it's greatest hits.