Paul Graham quotes Peter Norvig on Lisp and Design Patterns

[gusl]

Paul Graham says:

Peter Norvig found that 16 of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were "invisible or simpler" in Lisp

Comments

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

"invisible"?

(yeah ((they)(where((((probably))(hidden((((((by)))((all))) the)) (parentheses)))))

:-)

Re:

[evan.livejournal.com]

haha!

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

If you read the document, there's actually stuff about Lisp itself. The whole concept of freedom of abstraction is pretty damn cool. You can't really beat Lisp (I guess that's because it's universal). As Graham said, if he should have to use patterns that would mean he should be writing code-generating macros (any patterns => non-optimal coding). But in Lisp you never need that.

I've wondered about how to combine Kolmogorov Complexity with readable code. (i.e. what's NICEST SHORTEST program?) Perhaps I should define readable fragments of languages... (training the machine to compress readable code isn't enough).

Re:

[techstep.livejournal.com]

I'm vaguely familiar with Kolmogorov complexity and programs, but I'm not sure about formal methods of determining "readablility". Seems too subjective for me.

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

no doubt.

(I have a plan... involving Lisp and India. Could be good. If more materializes on it, I'll let you know.)

Re:

[chronicfreetime.livejournal.com]

Just call it "Visual Lisp".