Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49094338

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

On the surface, it blends APL and LISP. Making S/M-exprs terse and building “diamond-less” left-to-right APL on top. This part is pretty okay.

In core, unification of FRP and AD as already mentioned. This is mainly to do efficient online/incremental learning. Currently this is a disaster and main source of tech debt. I got some attacks.

Fun and curiosity is the main motivator. Having single system that can do user-editable explorable ML explanations is just cherry on top.

Since I am not Conal Elliot, don't expect a beautiful theoretical unification of FRP and AD from first principles. Rather, a horrific monster that holds together mostly because a lot of duct-tape.

The link points to the semi-interactive tour of the language, which will get the job done much better than I could in here.

Hope you hate/like it!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48951565

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

FORTRAN —"the infantile disorder"—, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.

He told the truth and in turn Fortran corrected its course, but Dijkstra probably didn't change his mind about it.

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> These pioneers, even when they disagreed, had pretty precise arguments and very rarely feeling the feelies.

The feud between Backus and Dijkstra kinda persuaded me of the opposite.

https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your...

Dijkstra was highly influential in theoretical (proofs, algos) and practical (spec&compiler for Algol60) compuper science. But in reality he used his fountain pen disproportionately more than the computer.

As he said, Java is a mess and any sensible person would oppose the switch from Haskell to Java. I am almost sure he never used any of them. Might have read about them, but highly doubt he run any on computer.

As for the high-level status of Haskell and APL — both languages are very mathematical. Haskell goes very into the abstract realm of computation, while APL tackles very raw form of computation. Semantically, Haskell is way more high-level. In terms of economy of notation and unified concepts, APL has no match.

What I would like to know is how he would bend Algol 60 if he had tablet with pencil that could evaluate it in real-time.

Kinda hard to find where Dijkstra praised something (except Algol 60).

One funny example: he called FORTRAN "an infantile disorder", though he said this about the team behind it: "At that time this was a project of great temerity and the people responsible for it deserve our great admiration.".

On LISP: "LISP has jokingly been described as 'the most intelligent way to misuse a computer'. I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts."

Alan Kay on Dijkstra: "Arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-dijkstras."

FORTRAN — "an infantile disorder"

COBOL — "the use of COBOL cripples the mind"

BASIC — students exposed to it are "mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration"

PL/I — "the fatal disease"

APL — "a mistake, carried through to perfection"

He liked his languages and programs to be easily traceable with pen & paper. He always wrote programs on the paper (and proved correctness) and only then into computer. REPL-driven development (what APL pioneered) was a foreign concept to him. He would be so appalled by LLM code generation.

Monadic/dyadic case for single glyph works nice only when you have a default value associated with it. For example `√16` is actually `2√16`. Or `log 100` is `10 log 100`. And `-3` is `0-3`.

Last sentence is epic.

There are 5 parts so far:

1. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper – overview of the concept

2. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-2 – intro to Fluent notation

3. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-3 – inspirational prior inventions

4. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-4 - how to think efficiently (including longer demo)

5. https://mlajtos.mu/posts/new-kind-of-paper-5 – review of Apple Math Notes and suggestions for improvements

Keyboard version of Fluent is available here: https://mlajtos.github.io/fluent/?code=RG9jdW1lbnRhdGlvbg

Fair. Thank you :)

https://github.com/mlajtos/fluent/blob/main/client.tsx