Top all-time · #3567
Structural insight
Personal blog · fexpr.blogspot.comprogrammingphilosophy
Structural insight is a personal blog at fexpr.blogspot.com about programming and philosophy. Since 2011, 22 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “Structural insight: Lisp and interpreted programming languages”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
John Shutt's blog on fexprs, Lisp-family language semantics and his Kernel language. HN readers link it as a fuller explanation of fexprs and a source of language-design insight.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Structural insight: Lisp and interpreted programming languages2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-10-22
- The trouble with monads2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-01-05
- Where do types come from?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-11-15
- Structural insight: Primacy of syntax2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-06-21
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-11-24
What Hacker News says?
The fexpr idea is at the very heart of Lisp, which I think makes it truly transposable to other paradigms. Alan Kay credits the fexpr as one of the inspirations for Smalltalk[0] taken from Lisp: > My next question was, why on earth call it a functional language? Why not just base everything on FEXPRs and force evaluation on the receiving side when needed? I could never get a good answer, but the question was very he…
Comment linking /2011/04/fexpr.html
on “Six programming languages I’d like to see”Submitted The great vectors-versus-quaternions debate (2014) as a story · 37 points
HN discussionFor the style of programming described in this post, skip all this common lisp smalltalk nostalgia. The real epitome is Kernel with its fexprs http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/kernel.html , and also the creator's philosophical insight in https://fexpr.blogspot.com/2016/08/interpreted-programming-l... It's not my cup of tea, but I respect him for doing something different and taking this thread out of the haze and to it…
Comment linking /2016/08/interpreted-programming-languages.html
on “Hell Is Other REPLs”Submitted Where do types come from? as a story · 23 points
HN discussionThis analogy is apt for working with LLMs. Were you aware, tho, that it has repeatedly been used to describe Lisp? I think Lisp is an ideal language to use with an LLM, because it is essentially a notation for a logical assembly code, and I expect there to be compound benefits in using it with AI. Lisp [...] made me aware that software could be close to executable mathematics. — ACM Fellow Profile of L. Peter Deutsc…
Comment linking /2018/10/lisp-mud-and-wikis.html
on “Code is clay now”Submitted The trouble with monads as a story · 6 points
HN discussionYes, his blog: https://fexpr.blogspot.com . As far as I know he never published his physics ideas anywhere else.
Comment linking /
on “Wikinews mourns loss of volunteer John Shutt”Submitted Structural insight: Primacy of syntax as a story · 5 points
HN discussionWhat you're describing with parameter ordering is Lisp's Mysterious Tuple Problem [0]. It's also part of why Lisp works so well for one or only a few developers, but breaks down for large teams. Javascript (and Self before it) has really started a structural revolution with the JSON object as a syntactic form. I'm currently working on a language very similar to your last paragraph, where all objects do have such a f…
Comment linking /2011/04/fexpr.html
on “Lisp, Smalltalk, and the power of symmetry (2014)”Submitted Dangerous things should be difficult to do by accident as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIn that case, I would recommend reading this post. Shutt explains it much better than I can. https://fexpr.blogspot.com/2011/04/fexpr.html
Comment linking /2011/04/fexpr.html
on “What is a programmable programming language? (2019)”Submitted Structural insight: Lisp and interpreted programming languages as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe irony of the 2 + 3 = 5 example is that it shows how domain-specific languages work best with iconic forms. Paralinguistic symbols as constituency tends toward mismatched metaphors and visual sameness. However, crafted carefully, such tools represent the best available to tame complexity. There is a level of metaprogramming even more fundamental than Lisp macros - the ancient and maligned fexpr [0]. They are almo…
Comment linking /2011/04/fexpr.html
on “What is a programmable programming language? (2019)”Submitted Interpreted Programming Languages (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Number theory/abstract algebra, which is the study of natural numbers among other things, is a form of set theory. Let S be the set {a,b} and let T be the set {c,d}. There are two bijections S -> T between these two sets {(a,c),(b,d)} and {(a,d), (b,c)}. These two sets are isomorphic to one another because they have the same cardinality. The isomorphism classes of sets are cardinalities which are themselves the na…
Comment linking /2011/11/where-do-types-come-from.html
on “Dialects of Lisp”Submitted Sapience and language as a story · 2 points
HN discussionJohn Shutt : https://fexpr.blogspot.com/ https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/play.html He designed Kernel Programming Language, a very neat lisp that allow to exploit and reason about the semantics powers that lisp has binged over the years (symbolic, continuations, encapsulation …). I also highly appreciates the articles that he writes in his blog, they gave me “insights” ...
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who are your programming rockstars, and why?”Submitted Guarded Continuations as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIndeed. I think this something that people are often confused about, e.g. one blogger[0] comments: > The key to understanding the fixpoint theorem, for me anyway, was realizing that when it says FG=G, it does not mean that for every F there is a G such that by calling F with parameter G one can get back G. I mention this in the blog post, above. The equality operator in FG=G is the equivalence relation induced by th…
Comment linking /2013/07/bypassing-no-go-theorems.html?showComment=1385649732798
on “Fixed-point combinator”Submitted The trouble with monads as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'm reminded of the Zen koan where the students cannot tell whether the flag is moving in the wind or the wind is moving around the flag. The master tells them that the mind, neither the flag nor the wind, is what is moving. Both sides of the interpretative coin are needed. We must simultaneously understand that QM is epistemic and also that QM is contextual. The author asks, > How do probabilities get into QM? Beca…
Comment linking /2016/06/the-co-hygiene-principle.html
on “The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics (2017) [pdf]”Submitted Structural insight: Fexpr as a story · 2 points
HN discussionoh, reading his previous blog article I see that J. Shutt (he made kernel, reviving fexpr in a way) commented https://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2011/08/notes-on-delimited-c... and that he has a blogger (last entry in 2020 though) https://fexpr.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Delimited Generators – A more natural API for JS generators”Submitted Primacy of Syntax (2011) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis is an implementation of (as the name suggests!) Scheme without special forms, inspired by John Shutt's Kernel language. See http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/kernel.html , http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1680 , and http://fexpr.blogspot.com for more discussion, and http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2011/09/kernel-underground.ht... for implementations.
Comment linking /
on “Scheme without special forms”Submitted Co-hygiene and quantum gravity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Structural insight: Co-hygiene and quantum gravity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Natural intelligence as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
