lisp

programming languages

Classic Computer Science Puzzles

Software developers do have a proclivity for puzzles. Perhaps that’s why books like To Mock a Mockingbird exist. It’s a collection of logic puzzles which is considered an introduction to lambda calculus, one of the core concepts of Lisp. Such puzzle questions are de rigueur for many programming

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

lisp

Reddit: Language vs. Platform

My previous entry, Twitter: Service vs. Platform, was widely misunderstood. I suppose I only have myself to blame, so I’ll try to clarify with another example. Consider Reddit. The Reddit development team switched from Lisp to Python late in 2005: If Lisp is so great, why did we stop

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

programming languages

Are Design Patterns How Languages Evolve?

Paul Graham’s essay, Revenge of the Nerds, is a nearly pornographic love letter to Lisp. If you can manage to read all the way to the end, there’s an interesting footnote buried at the bottom: Peter Norvig found that 16 of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments