Lisp as the Maxwell’s equations of software (2012)

http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/lisp-as-the-maxwells-equations-of-software/

by YAYERKA • 11 years ago

115 8 11 years ago

michaelnielsen.org

vezzy-fnord• 11 years ago

Previously on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3830867

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9038505

codemac• 11 years ago

Neat seeing the python and the lisp implementation next to each other. It reminds me of 'Make A Lisp'[0].

[0] https://github.com/kanaka/mal

pjmlp• 11 years ago

Back when I was into Python (mid-2000), this reference was quite famous:

Python for Lisp Programmers - http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html

sytelus• 11 years ago

I like the article content but analogy is completely off putting. Maxwell's Equations weren't exactly known for its compactness. When he published them, they were huge in number and size. The major achievement of Maxwell's equation was to calculate speed of light with previously known completely unrelated constants. This opened up door that light was perhaps electromagnetic waves. The code described in this article is cool for its compactness but otherwise from computer science perspective its not breaking any new grounds.

cyrus_• 11 years ago

I think if anything should be seen as analagous to Maxwell's equations, it should be the lambda calculus. It is actually a piece of mathematics, rather than the mess of compiler internals this article describes.

tromp• 11 years ago

Agreed. The Binary lambda calculus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_lambda_calculus

features this universal machine:

    (λ11)(λλλ1(λλλλ3(λ5(3(λ2(3(λλ3(λ123)))(4(λ4(λ31(21))))))
    (1(2(λ12))(λ4(λ4(λ2(14)))5))))(33)2)(λ1((λ11)(λ11)))

which parses a binary-encoded lambda term and evaluates its application to the remaining input bits.

peter303• 11 years ago

Technically these are Heavyside equations who was fond of Div and Curl. The original 20 Maxwell equations are here:

www.zpenergy.com/downloads/Orig_maxwell_equations.pd

garycomtois• 11 years ago

The tiddlylisp implementation is interesting. Seeing a Lisp compiler in my usual language (Python) is helpful. If nothing else, I'm really glad I read the article since I'm giving Lisp another try (via Land of Lisp, http://landoflisp.com/) after a 9 month hiatus.

Lisp as the Maxwell’s equations of software (2012)

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