Hi, thought you might care to know about my new lisp book,
The Unknowable, being published by Springer-Verlag this spring.
It is a companion volume to my book The Limits of Mathematics,
which also uses lisp. You can preview my book at
http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/unknowable
Rgds,
GJC
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==> omega
==> aleph
==> infinite??
it might be quite interesting but i cannot stand it.
this book reminds me a lot on frank tipler
see http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/eht.html
·······@watson.ibm.com wrote:
: Hi, thought you might care to know about my new lisp book,
: The Unknowable, being published by Springer-Verlag this spring.
: It is a companion volume to my book The Limits of Mathematics,
: which also uses lisp. You can preview my book at
: http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/unknowable
---
Reini
·······@watson.ibm.com wrote:
: Hi, thought you might care to know about my new lisp book,
: The Unknowable, being published by Springer-Verlag this spring.
: It is a companion volume to my book The Limits of Mathematics,
: which also uses lisp. You can preview my book at
: http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/unknowable
this is not a book about Lisp. it is a book about mathematics that
uses Lisp as a tool. as a book about math it's moderately interesting
(though largely a rehash of Hofstadter -- and without his flair). as
a book about Lisp it's hopelessly outdated and naive. the book uses
notation and conventions not seen since the early '60s. for example,
the book uses M-expressions, which pretty much disappeared after
Lisp 1.5 in 1962 (and good riddance to them).
another example: in Chapter 2, the author writes:
"You can do numerical calculations in LISP, but it's really intended
for symbolic calculations. In fact LISP is really a computerized
version of set theory, at least set theory for finite sets."
this is a gross mischaracterisation of the current state of the art
in Lisp. Lisp is a fully general-purpose programming language. it is
quite suitable for numerical computation. you can write databases
in Lisp. you can do graphics in Lisp. you can write simulators in
Lisp. you can write real-time control software in Lisp.
it is obvious that the author has not done his homework on Lisp.
the bibliography contains not a single reference to a Lisp work,
not even McCarthy's original papers (even though the author does
acknowledge McCarthy in the text as the inventor or Lisp). it is
unfortunate that Chaitan has apparently not read Abelson and Sussman.
Scheme makes a much better vehicle for mathematical exposition than
Lisp 1.5.
it is ironic that the author, obviously a fan of Lisp, should
be promulgating such outdated and damaging views. Lisp has always
struggled against myths and misperceptions. Chaitan does the
community no favors by characterising his book as being about Lisp.
Erann Gat
···@jpl.nasa.gov
From: Bob Riemenschneider
Subject: In defense of M-exprs (was: Re: Mini-review of "The Unknowable" (was: Re: New LISP Book))
Date:
Message-ID: <tpbthfdfmu.fsf_-_@coyote.csl.sri.com>
···@jpl.nasa.gov (Erann Gat) writes:
> ... the book uses
> notation and conventions not seen since the early '60s. for example,
> the book uses M-expressions, which pretty much disappeared after
> Lisp 1.5 in 1962 (and good riddance to them). ...
In my opinion, Allen put M-exprs to great use in _Anatomy of LISP_ (1978).
When I started learning Lisp, I found the proper use of QUOTE (when to
write (LIST 'A) and when to write '(A), e.g.) a bit baffling, and somehow
the explanation that QUOTE just means "stop evaluating here" didn't help
all that much. Once I read Allen's book -- which starts with writing Lisp
programs for manipulating S-exprs as M-exprs and then shows how M-exprs
can be represented as S-exprs for purposes of mechanizing evaluation --
the rationale for QUOTE, and the sense in which it is an analogue of
quotation that can be used as a much more convenient substitute for G"odel
numbering in metamathematical arguments (as McCarthy originally intended),
became much clearer. Honestly, when I got to the discussion on
pp. 104-105 and saw
\Re[[<sexpr>]] = (QUOTE <sexpr>)
a light bulb lit up over my head, just like in a cartoon!
Maybe my experience is unusual. (I should probably mention I'm the product
of a Ph.D. program in mathematical logic and had relatively little
programming background when I started learning Lisp.) Are there any
other fans of this use of M-exprs out there?
-- rar
P.S. OTOH, continuing to write programs as M-exprs after you understand what
QUOTE is all about seems like a real bad idea, unless your *objective*
is to discourage people from actually running your programs.
In article <····················@milo.jpl.nasa.gov> Erann Gat writes:
·······@watson.ibm.com wrote:
: Hi, thought you might care to know about my new lisp book,
: The Unknowable, being published by Springer-Verlag this spring.
this is not a book about Lisp. it is a book about mathematics that
uses Lisp as a tool. as a book about math it's moderately interesting
(though largely a rehash of Hofstadter -- and without his flair). as
a book about Lisp it's hopelessly outdated and naive. the book uses
Nonetheless, the tale of the researchers' shoot-out in chapter 6 [*] as
well as its joyful `G"odel, Turing, and I' style make the book rather
unique.
[*] http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/unknowable/ch6.html
rthappe