Lisp

check out what an IKN0x means here

Understanding different languages can open up one’s mind towards different cultures.

The evolution of languages over centuries and common ancestors there-of over millenia indicates the evolution of cultural complexity.

The Conventional Take

I grew up actively conversing in 4 languages: English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujrati. French was my first romance language I was exposed to for over 8 years (I say exposed as was learning this academically as a third language and didn’t use this as a “natural” language as much as the others).

I finished my first pass of SICP (structure and interpretation of computer programs) around 3 years ago. Since, I’ve realized the elegantly implicit existence of symbolic algebra in several domains that I personally explore on a regular basis.

That initial infatuation with Lisp ( and consequently symbolic computation ) has simmered and fermented enough in my mind to be realised as a potent generic thinking device. To cement my commitment to the same, I’ll regularly dive deeper into relevant academia so I don’t lose out on the joys of thinking for the sake of itself.

What makes lisp so unique is the way its code is structured - you definitely can’t miss all those parentheses. In this section of the series, I discuss the cause for such a representation and how that makes lisp unique in terms of how it views its code as data as code (aka homo-iconicity).

Further reading

• Python disassembler
• Homoiconity
• Byte Code
• S-expressions
• Common Operator Notation
• Abstract Syntax Tree
• The Blub Paradox

Call to collaborate

If you’re someone who shares the dream of making lisp popular and mainstream so that we can use it for our jobs and don’t have to switch to blubs to make a living (without denting its charm of course) , consider contributing to the notes and hit me up via mail or any of the other media I’m present on.

This is the first in a series of blog posts that follow the educational common lisp series on my youtube channel as an auxilliary.

I’ll be summarizing the videos in these blogs and be using these to point to references and additional resources that further elaborate the matter.

[As of 0x213B : 2023-08-17 Thu]

I use emacs for a lot of my daily tasks and spend majority of my time in it. This is a review of some significant components of my init.el

;keyboard all the way
(menu-bar-mode -1)
(tool-bar-mode -1)
(scroll-bar-mode -1)

;I don't like distractions
(setq byte-compile-warnings '(cl-functions))
(setq ring-bell-function 'ignore)
(setq visible-bell t)

I chose the most recently engineered package-management solution when I began with emacs, haven’t switched since and don’t think I’ll need to. Migrating from vim, I preferred a configuration file rather than installations via melpa interface. Also, freezing and thawing is cool : exact reproducibility is guaranteed.

Given I’ve passed through SICP once, quickly grasping common lisp to build stuff and explore the traditional and industrial aspects of lisp (I know clojure exists but traditional…) was my next objective: with decent speed and only solving the somewhat involved exercises, it took me two weeks to complete this book.

The exercises aren’t meant to be a challenge but to adapt to the environment and the topics introduced. The book does not explore concepts with depth (CLOS, macros, etc…) but that shouldn’t be the objective of an introduction anyway.