Notices by DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄) (dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz), page 3

@screwtape @kentpitman @rwxrwxrwx
Winograd had a separate FFT per prime length, composing for composite lengths. So we can expect you to also have one per prime p, right? How many primes could there be, after all.

@screwtape @AmenZwa
I just noticed I've had a 1977 Multics MACLISP "hackery" window open since last year, I don't remember why.

If you're interested in this bit of history:

The Multics MACLISP Compiler
The Basic Hackery -- a Tutorial
By Bernard S. Greenberg, December, 1977 [updated to HTML 1996]
"...this paper still presents one of very few accounts of powerful compilation techniques for Lisp on so-called "stock architectures,"...

"To those LISPmen who have achieved proficiency in this our chosen language, and who have wondered about the strategies of the MACLISP compilers, I offer this tutorial, wherein I divulge the basic hacks of the Multics Compiler (lcp). Many of these hacks, including the entire first pass, were derived from the ITS Compiler (COMPLR, now NCOMPLR (or NCOMPL)), a much, much, hairier beast of which I have not yet achieved mastery. By learning that which I offer herein, the ambitious LISPman might not only acquire sufficient knowledge to modify or debug the Multics Compiler, but undertake the serious study of NCOMPLR. In fact, the state management hacks presented herein are of great interest in comparison to those of other modern compilers, e.g., Multics PL/I. He who comprehends this will also glean generally powerful knowledge of compiler-writing techniques in general, and will have interesting and useful knowledge under his belt.

"If you are not already familiar with LISP, in some detail, including the traditional implementations and value/object issues, you probably should not be reading this."

https://www.multicians.org/lcp.html

@screwtape @aartaka
*You're* writing C? You swore that you abandoned old languages and moved on forever.

@jackwilliambell
Now tell the truth, didn't you draw cartoons on meeting whiteboards before retiring, too? 🙂

@Aphelion
[funny retort with a twist and a raised eyebrow]

@jimmyhmiller
> Is the podcast archived anywhere? Or do I need to get it live?

I don't know, you'd have to ask the organizer, Screwlisp ( @screwtape ) -- I'm just a clueless attendee who discovered them a month or two ago. I find it a fun get together.

> What The Dormouse Said is on my reading listing, but I will have to bump it up.

Reflecting a bit, it adds info that I have not seen anywhere else, which is why I excitedly recommend it. But a hypothetical naif might not see what the big deal is, I suppose, in e.g. accentuating some historical counter-culture aspects of computer history.

However I assume anyone reading it *has* in fact read some other computing histories, whether or not they lived through any part of such.

The author, Markoff, of course has an impressive journalistic pedigree.

@Aphelion
Woot! Let's go also Here we go!
🤡 👍

Interesting: Tree calculus, which is Turing complete/equivalent since it can emulate both S and K combinators.

Post by @maonu: https://mathstodon.xyz/@maonu/113625786880840164

Which links to a Tree Calculus web site, which has both an OCaml and a JavaScript implementation of the reduction rules:

https://treecalcul.us/specification/

Which mentions a book:
"Reflective Programs in Tree Calculus", by Barry Jay and Jose Vergara, 2021
"Tree calculus is seeded by a single operator, whose self-application gives rise to pow- erful reflective programs including a size program that can compute its own size, an equality program that can decide its own equality, and a self-evaluator that can evaluate itself. This is achieved without any of the usual outside machinery, such as the Gödel numbering of Turing machines, the quotation of lambda-abstractions or serialisation of programs. The resulting theory of computation is both simple and powerful: simple because it is based on three equations only; powerful because one program can query the internal structure of another, using a mix of extensional and intensional techniques"

https://www.amazon.com/Reflective-Programs-Tree-Calculus-Barry-ebook/dp/B095BPM2MF

@screwtape @northernlights @kentpitman @sacha @shizamura @amszmidt @prahou

I do not see anything in the above that explictly says "Hey, I'll be on lambdaMOO at 11:59pm UTC Tue, please join us!" -- but you did mean that, yes?

@prahou @screwtape @sigrid @shizamura
> I don't even use computers.

I happen to know that you programmed your telepathic gopher-to-mastodon gateway in C ON A COMPUTER. Checkmate!

@screwtape @shizamura

Yeah me too, although mind you, I'm coming in on the middle of this and I don't know what you two have been talking about.

@screwtape @shizamura
On the social mud I used to "live" on, DragonMud (there was also an unrelated RPG game DragonMud), "wizards" had limited admin privileges and "gods" had unlimited admin privileges. (I was a wizard)

This allowed the mud owner to recruit lots of help -- a small number of gods and maybe a dozen wizards.

As an aside, there was an Eliza-style bot, "Newt", mostly for the fun of the owner having a bot wandering around, but also it responded to HELP commands.

There's a certain kind of person that liked to harass the bot, while us regulars were protective of him. They would eventually get a big surprise when the bot turned out to be a god who kicked them off the mud given sufficient harassment, and sometimes even perma-ban them. This was quite funny but also quite effective.

@screwtape
Is this the DEC 10 guy you were trying to recall?

I follow him but I have trouble with names sometimes.

Lars Brinkhoff
@ larsbrinkhoff @ mastodon.sdf.org

Also I have an ITS on emulated DEC-10 account through Eric Swenson (KC6EJS); not sure if he's on Mastodon. telnet es-its.swenson.org 10003

And whoever it is that runs the ICM Interim Computer Museum @ SDF @ icm @ mastodon.sdf.org
https://icm.museum

@screwtape @aartaka @pkw @prahou
Bill Joy was a supergenius programmer, but he was not a Lisp guy.

Ex is significantly more powerful than ed (or sed), though, so I would think Emacs+ex would work better than Emacs+ed.

@screwtape @kentpitman @prahou
Thanks, it was fun. (I'm Foolsbane BTW)

@fl
I feel like I wandered into the middle of a conversation, but it sounds like you're talking about Knuth. We can only hope he lives long enough.

@kentpitman @screwtape

[Edit: oh, I see you found the wikipedia article. Sorry, I could have sworn I had already read to the end of the thread before I posted. Mea culpa.]

Yes, the seminal psychology paper was "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information".

But it was cited by Newell and Simon, not authored by them. It was earlier, in 1956. It's been argued with as to the number and range, but the basic idea is on target.

> "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information"[1] is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology.[2][3][4] It was written by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Harvard University's Department of Psychology and published in 1956 in Psychological Review. It is often interpreted to argue that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is 7 ± 2. This has occasionally been referred to as Miller's law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

CC: https://mathstodon.xyz/@mdhughes@appdot.net

@kentpitman @screwtape
> He later created very interesting iteration abstractions that ended up in cltl2 but not in ansi common lisp.

Do you have a pointer to what those are, or a link to a paper about them, or something? Thanks.

@screwtape
I'm not quite sure why that makes you enormously happy, but as a language designer, I can share a related observation:

Programmers seem to me to do better with tools that let them use approximations of natural language. For instance, in the Smalltalk language, it was/is very common to have method named arguments marked with things like "WithHelpOf:" -- markers of prepositions and so on.

Languages with unnamed arguments, like Common Lisp, C, etc, can be dealt with because we have big brains, but somewhat less naturally.

@screwtape
Technically speaking, most possible programs *are* undecidable, as a matter of proven fact rather than as an author's opinion, and many programming books with an emphasis on computer science will say so or even spend chapters on the subject.

In light of that, do you recall more things about the book, to help pin down that particular book?