Notices by Brian Marick (marick@mstdn.social)

@amszmidt It may have been a higher optimization setting (I seem to remember you could, for example, turn off detecting overflow and converting a fixnum into a bignum).

But I really do think the Maclisp/Common Lisp folk were pragmatic about the realities of efficiency: function calls were *expensive* back then, and tolerated differences in behavior between compiled and interpreted code in a way that seems very foreign today.

@amszmidt It's been more than 40 years since I spent my time disassembling Lucid Common Lisp's compiler output (to find out the clever efficiency hacks they used, in service of Gould Common Lisp), so I can't be sure, but I'm sure that it compiled a large set of primitives into inline machine code, with no level of indirection through a lookup table.

So you couldn't affect the interpreter by redefining `car`.

That's what I was (clumsily) alluding to.

@amszmidt @luciano You're right. But: I was looking for trivia to highlight that human language has no mechanism for protecting old definitions from new changes. Specifically, consider how "literally", "awesome", and "sublime" mean different things than they used to. Suppose a dictionary changes its definition of "awesome." That will change, subtly probably, the meaning of every definition that uses that word. (1/2)

That's different from how, in Ruby, you can change `Integer::+` and have it not affect all the additions the interpreter does (because, in this case – I believe – all the additions have been compiled to machine code).

In early Lisps, there was one namespace, so people could easily stomp on functions used by the interpreter. Same effect as compiling to machine code. (2/2)

What commonly-used programming languages have a single global namespace, such that you can redefine core functions? The only one I can think of is Emacs Lisp.

(Whereas you can redefine `+` in Ruby, that doesn't override the `+` the actual Ruby runtime uses. That's what I'm getting at with "global namespace".)

@luciano I think so. You can redefine `+` in Ruby and not blow everything up because you don't have access to the "real" definition (compiled in). Method swizzling sounds like what you can easily do in Emacs Lisp: which is stomp on a defined function.

But I think a core distinction I ignored is the difference between definitions that are compiled into machine language (`+`) and those that are not. The question was not a good one.

This interview with the author of /Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism/ is not bad on how Smith’s thought has been distorted: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revisiting-the-father-of-capitalism/id1081584611?i=1000665865388 https://geekdom.social/@FantasticalEconomics/113153115118145867

@donaldball @inthehands @dimsumthinking I don’t know the rules around this. When I read “bike trails”, I thought of the kind of trails mountain bikes are for. Do people try to keep ebikes off of side-of-the-road, in-town bike lanes? That seems wrong.

(And are there jurisdictions that actually *enforce* rules on bike lanes? Here, we all – ebikes, bikes, skateboards, are constantly dodging cars parked in the bike lanes.)

@inthehands @dimsumthinking I might look more carefully. I may be missing discrete assistance.

The Kids These Days all seem to ride powered skateboards or weird balancy things or scooter-type ebikes rather than Real Bikes. Or they ride buses. The city mass transit buses don’t collect fares at campus and nearby stops, so buses are packed between classes and the bike lanes are mostly empty.

@inthehands @baldur The Atlantic loves, loves, loves its narratives and “there’s something wrong with the Youths” is a big one. I gritted my teeth and stuck it out my subscription for too long because of Ed Yong.

But we should pity the poor author. You’re out there to gather supporting quotes for a pre-ordained conclusion and some damn subject-matter expert just insists on complicating things.

@dimsumthinking @inthehands I have Strong Opinions about the hale and hearty students who are riding their rental ebikes all around and never bothering to pedal. It’s a red letter day when I see someone pedaling an ebike.

I’m judgmental that way, at least about the Damn Kids.

@dimsumthinking @inthehands You can get these bikes in the US? I idly peeked and it seemed to be a Europe bike.

@inthehands I don’t think Ezra Klein heard me, and Dawn has little influence at the NYTimes.

@inthehands I’m for the equivalent to the Clooney op-ed in the Washington Post. Maybe from Hulk Hogan.

Drove Dawn to O’Hare yesterday. Listened to Ezra Klein podcast. Annoyed Dawn by continually saying to Mr. Klein, “So this is where you call for the GOP to dump Trump, right?” Preferably with some giddy speculation about how exciting the succession struggle would be. But no.

@inthehands @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus Since you said that nice thing, may I present my sole academic sociology publication: “Agile Software Development: A Manglish Way of Working”¹, in a followup book collection: /The Mangle IN Practice/² (2009).

¹https://user.fm/files/v2-21dcabb6abbfd8ebc5fabfe1e6f8fa65/marick-truly-final-dammit.pdf
²https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-mangle-in-practice

@inthehands @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus FYI: here’s my summary of what Pickering says about quaternions: http://www.exampler.com/old-blog/2004/02/13/index.html

@inthehands @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus /Proofs and Refutations/ is a wonderful book.

@inthehands @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus Pickering’s /The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science/¹ is along similar lines, using the example of the bubble chamber (invented because Glaser wanted to do lab-top science, but ended up inventing a symbol of Big Science) and Hamilton’s quaternions (he was trying to solve a completely different problem).

¹ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/556449.The_Mangle_of_Practice

@Asymmetricblue @evan Did Mondale play golf? I think some Minnesotans do.

https://www.mngolf.org/Courses

@inthehands *I’m* impressed. (The reality of portaging[?] a canoe came as rather a shock to me, first time.)