Top all-time · #15701
Ashwin Ram
Personal blog · ashwinram.orgprogrammingai
Ashwin Ram writes Cognitive Computing, a personal blog at ashwinram.org about programming and ai. Since 2014, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 5 times, most often “Of growing code and diminishing hacks (1986)”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Posts on Common Lisp programming, including a 1986 piece showing how an assq-based list lookup evolved into cleaner code. HN readers link it for these code examples as background on Lisp idioms.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A research blog by Ashwin Ram, PhD
Most-linked posts?
- Of growing code and diminishing hacks (1986)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-08-03
What Hacker News says?
An oldie: https://ashwinram.org/1986/01/28/a-short-ballad-dedicated-to... Describes the evolution from: (cdr (assq key a-list)) to: (let ((val (assq key a-list))) (cond ((not (null? val)) (cdr val)) (else nil)))
Comment linking /1986/01/28/a-short-ballad-dedicated-to-the-growth-of-programs/
on “Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)”Submitted (1986) a Short Ballad Dedicated to the Growth of Programs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionProgramming with a lot of higher order functions won't feel as clean in Common Lisp due to the #' and funcall. Basic Lisp programming with lists is a lot cleaner in a Lisp in which the empty list is false, and in which accessing nonexistent parts of a list (including the empty list) is a safe no-op that yields nil. Ashwin Ram's (cdr (assq key a-list)) almost works in Common Lisp in the form of (cdr (assoc key a-list…
Comment linking /1986/01/28/a-short-ballad-dedicated-to-the-growth-of-programs/
on “Modern, functional Common Lisp: myths and best practices”Submitted A Short Ballad Dedicated to the Growth of Programs (1986) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Of growing code and diminishing hacks (1986) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
