Top all-time · #440
Ron Garret
Personal blog · flownet.comprogrammingmath
Ron Garret's personal blog at flownet.com covers programming and math. Since 2007, 128 different Hacker News readers have linked it 317 times, most often “Lisping at JPL (2002)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ron Garret's essays, mostly his quantum mechanics paper and the JPL Lisp article, both as sources and as reading recommendations. Many links cite his Lisp and math writing as support.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called a fun read and an interesting article; one commenter has read the writing for 15 years.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Lisping at JPL (2002)53 people · 63 mentions · first linked 2008-09-15
- Lisping at JPL (2002)23 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2021-06-24
- Lisp as an alternative to Java (2000) [pdf]14 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2007-09-30
- Lisping at JPL (2002)10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2011-02-13
- No, quantum entanglement does not allow you to communicate faster than light6 people · 58 mentions · first linked 2008-01-24
- /ron/xooglers.html4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-03-10
- The awesome power of theory: explorations in the untyped λ calculus3 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2015-04-01
- Explorations in the Untyped Lambda Calculus3 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2021-06-28
- /ron/eg-rg-faq.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-02-01
- Quantum Mysteries Disentangled [pdf]2 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2021-07-20
What Hacker News says?
Sure, changing the syntax is not something to be done lightly. It has to be done judiciously and with great care. But it can be a huge win in some cases. For example, take a look at: https://flownet.com/gat/lisp/djbec.lisp It implements elliptic curve cryptography in Common Lisp using an embedded infix syntax.
Comment linking /gat/lisp/djbec.lisp
on “Cognitive load is what matters”Submitted Lisping at JPL (2002) as a story · 307 points
HN discussionInterestingly to me, a lot of your points apply to my own favourite language, Lisp. Regarding a lack of private anything, it's possible to monkey-patch any Lisp package or class however one wants. And of course, one can get true privacy in JavaScript if one wants, by using closures — the same trick applies in Common Lisp. Lisp debugging is great: one can set up all sorts of condition handlers and restarts, and invok…
Comment linking /gat/jpl-lisp.html
on “NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?”Submitted Why CSS should not be used for layout as a story · 248 points
HN discussionRon Garrett (formerly Erann Gat) has some background on how these decisions are made. It's not pretty. http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
Comment linking /gat/jpl-lisp.html
on “Philae has landed”Submitted Lisping at JPL (2002) as a story · 169 points
HN discussionI'm sure you've seen this; it's posted here regularly: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
Comment linking /gat/jpl-lisp.html
on “It’s time to kill the web app”Submitted Lisping at JPL (2002) as a story · 120 points
HN discussionI'm not an expert either. I'm a computer scientist, not a physicist. But the math behind QM -- at least the parts that matter for this discussion -- is pretty straightforward linear algebra. Really, anyone can learn it. So don't take my word for it, look into it and decide for yourself. You can start here: https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Physics-Princeton-Foundati... https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Experi…
Comment linking /ron/QM.pdf
on “Daniel Dennett has died”Submitted The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002) as a story · 97 points
HN discussionSide by side: http://www.flownet.com/ron/vermeer.html
Comment linking /ron/vermeer.html
on “Vermeer's paintings might be 350 year-old color photographs”Submitted Lisp as an alternative to Java (2000) [pdf] as a story · 83 points
HN discussionLisping at JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) is an interesting read: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html It is written by lisper at HN who submitted this article :)
Comment linking /gat/jpl-lisp.html
on “After 37 years, Voyager has fired up its trajectory thrusters”Submitted The Rise and Fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab. as a story · 82 points
HN discussionhttp://www.flownet.com/ron/css-rant.html
Comment linking /ron/css-rant.html
on “Who Will Command the Robot Armies?”Submitted Lisping at JPL (2002) as a story · 71 points
HN discussionThere's a lot of examples of GC in realtime systems. It's just a different set of concerns. Rather then the programmer worrying about memory constantly, the compiler engineers are worrying about memory constantly. This is a very fun read: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
Comment linking /gat/jpl-lisp.html
on “Scala Native v0.1”Submitted Lisping at JPL (2020) as a story · 56 points
HN discussionThere's Lisp as an Alternative to Java: http://www.flownet.com/gat/papers/lisp-java.pdf
Comment linking /gat/papers/lisp-java.pdf
on “How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language”Submitted The idiot's guide to special variables and lexical closures (2003) [pdf] as a story · 51 points
HN discussionFair enough, though reading some histories there's been a variety of languages used at JPL/NASA, and Python/C++ is a latecomer [1], [2]. 1: http://wiki.c2.com/?MarsSpiritSoftwareProblem 2: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html At the end of the day, if Python/C++ is effective for their team and works, then it gets the job done. Personally, I just dislike writing math/simulation code in Python. The syntax is too l…
Comment linking /gat/jpl-lisp.html
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2017)”Submitted No, quantum entanglement does not allow you to communicate faster than light as a story · 51 points
HN discussion> you are telling me that during the night aliens will attack my business That's right. That is exactly what I am telling you. Aliens. Definitely aliens. > Your claim is the first I ever heard of such a thing. What can I say? You heard it here first. > Having orders of magnitude better price/performance is amazing. Yes. It was. > those are not easy to come by Indeed not. > What went wrong? That's a long story. But t…
Comment linking /gat/fnlj.html
on “Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing”Submitted An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists as a story · 50 points
HN discussion> I'm not looking to break through the undecidability barrier That, too, was far from clear. You said you were tackling this problem: > what is the property of a program that makes it undecidable? and I told you: > That is itself an undecidable question! and explained why (at least three times). And AFAICT you still don't get it because you still say you want to: > implement an algorithm that can prove theorems we a…
Comment linking /ron/lambda-calculus.html
on “Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach”Submitted Lisp as an Alternative to Java (2000) [pdf] as a story · 43 points
HN discussionExcerpted from http://www.flownet.com/ron/chaitin.html : Proof of the undecidability of the halting problem in six sentences: Assume that there exists a program H that solves the halting problem, that is, H takes two input parameters, a program P and an input I and returns true if P halts when run on input I, false otherwise. Construct a program B that does the following: B accepts as input a program P and computes…
Comment linking /ron/chaitin.html
on “Why I Don't Love Gödel, Escher, Bach”Submitted The Complete Idiot's Guide to Common Lisp Packages [pdf] as a story · 42 points
HN discussionThere is one other way in which you are not a failure, and I am sure that I am not alone in thinking about it: I have been reading your words for 15 years, from the time I was a baby CS major. That's really true, e.g. , here[1] is a comment from 11 years ago where I mentioned that a lisp you wrote for the Apple //e informed a lisp for the Apple //e that I wrote. Especially in my college years (2009-2013, ish), the w…
Comment linking /ron/eg-rg-faq.html
on “I am (not) a failure: Lessons learned from six failed startup attempts”Submitted Lisping at JPL (2002) as a story · 22 points
HN discussion
