Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
1. Johnny Von Neumann isnât nearly as deep a genius as people seem to think.
If he was, he wouldnât have said bullshit like this
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
2. Code is crystallized thought
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
3. Object Oriented Programming (as practiced today) is bullshit.
Hedgehog paradigm.
Requires you to have taxonomic overview of the program youâre writing before you start writing it.
Inevitable that will end up as spaghetti of incidental complexity.
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
4. Nobody really has been doing OOP since SmallTalk (maybe RealTalk and the shit theyâve been doing at HARC and Dynamicland are exceptions)
Java and Ruby (God forbid Rails) and Objective C for sure arenât following Kayâs footsteps.
https://wiki.c2.com/?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOrientedâŚ
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
5. The purpose of a programming language (and the programs you write) is to build up useful abstractions that extend the realm of thinkable thought and hold otherwise intractable problems in your head.
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
6. The measure of a good programming language is the speed at which you build DSLs for the problems you want to solve
The measure of good code is whether you and the people you work with are able to reuse it for problems you werenât anticipating when you wrote it initially.
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
7. Syntax matters, a bit.
One simple reason Clojure is better than CommonLisp is that it is easier to read
Vectors are [ ]
Let bindings in a vector
Maps are { }
keywords :this
In CL (vector a b c) (hashmap x 1 b 2) â way harder to skim.
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
8. Polish notation is way better for reading and writing code than things that try to look like english
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
9. The ternary operator in Javascript is pretty dope though â I do sometimes miss it when writing simple if statements in my let bindings.
Sometimes have thought about making a macro for it, but something tells me this is a sin I would live to regret.
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
10. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true â but the effects are far more pronounced for programming languages than for spoken languages.
The language you write code in ends up shaping huge parts of you worldview even when youâre not programming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic\_relativityâŚ
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
11. Rich Hickey is a better guru than the Pope or the Dali Lama.
He understands exceptionally deep truths about the universe, and converts them into actionable tools for building a better world.
Learn about Whiteheadâs metaphysics through him
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
12. The coolest thing about Javascript is prototypical inheritance.
Totally mind bending when you think about it, and how it maps to your mind.
Steve Yegge nailed it in this post
Better intro to Douglas Hofstadterâs work than any Iâve seen by Doug.
https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pattern.htmlâŚ
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
13. Any program could be theoretically written on in any turing complete language, but it is not actually possible for humans to write a complex web app in brainfuck
Same applies for modeling paradigms for problems and data
Some problems suit a given paradigm, some donât
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
14. One of the best things about Clojure (as an âimmigrant communityâ) is that people bring paradigms and patterns with them from other languages.
APL, J â very cool ideas there from array programming langs. Can play in that headspace via core.matrix
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
15. Pattern matching in Erlang gives a totally different style for writing and thinking about recursive functions.
You get to step into that world thanks to Sean Johnson when you use core.match
Conor White-Sullivan đ @Conaw 2019-12-15
16. Clojure as a programming language community might be what really good post-racial Fascism looks like.
Everyone is there because they really love and trust Richâs aesthetics and principles. Glorious leader.
Great ideas brought in from everywhere, but filtered through a lens.