Ask HN: What's Paul Graham been up to?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8176016

by peapod91 • 12 years ago

54 16 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

It's been a while since I've seen any posts or new PG essays--just wondering if we can expect anything soon? :)

shouldbeworking• 12 years ago

https://twitter.com/paulg

tomhoward• 12 years ago

He's quite active on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/paulg

Other than that he's probably just enjoying spending quality time with his young family after a relentlessly busy few years.

kazinator2• 12 years ago

He's designing an even better Lisp dialect in which lambda is spelled f (down a full 50% from fn!) and let bindings do not require any parentheses at all:

    (let a 1 b 2 c 3 (+ a b c)) -> 6.

Note how there can only be one form, otherwise it is ambiguous. But when you have two or more forms in a construct ("implicit progn"), all but the last are evaluated purely for their side effects (pun intended): it is imperative programming, which this new form of let nicely banishes.

chubot• 12 years ago

Is this a joke or is there some update/successor to Arc?

ChristianBundy• 12 years ago

This is a joke.

lisper2• 12 years ago

Note how there can only be one form, otherwise it is ambiguous

Actually, that's not true. You can disambiguate multiple forms by noting that variables are atoms while forms are lists.

kazinator2• 12 years ago

Here is a problem: symbol macros. Symbol macro foo could expand to a form like (bar xyzzy) let cannot know whether foo is intended as a form (via expansion of to (bar xyzzy)) or whether it's intended as a new lexical variable shadowing the symbol macro foo. It doesn't matter whether let is a special form or macro: something at some point has to walk the code of let and make this decision, whether that is the expander for a let macro, or the code walker that traverses special forms in search of macros.

Robby2023• 12 years ago

It's actually been 137 days since he made his last comment on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg

However, he is very active on Twitter

redtrackker• 12 years ago

He's enjoying time with his kids (source: Twitter). My fav tweet - "If there is anything in the world better than being spontaneously hugged by a 2 year old, I haven't found it in 49 years."

selmnoo• 12 years ago

Woah, he has a 2 year old? Amazing, that while I was pretty actively following his (and jl's) comments 2 years back, I saw absolutely no mention of a baby (or even so much as a hint of it). I guess he's just crazy good at keep his professional and personal life separate.

icebraining• 12 years ago

He has a four-year-old (as well?): http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html

gexla• 12 years ago

In contrast, being spontaneously hugged by an adult stranger is at least a misdemeanor.

munimkazia• 12 years ago

By the way, I noticed that a lot of popular geeks who we (or me personally) look up have started young families. Probably just confirmation bias. But it's nice to see.

dzink• 12 years ago

During YCHacks he and Jessica came by the YC office with little kids. I was too busy finishing up our app to pay attention, but the two times I looked up, he was carrying a little one around the office on his shoulders.

TimSchumann• 12 years ago

It's not that it doesn't matter, it's that I just don't care.

Ask HN: What's Paul Graham been up to?

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