Comments on: LOOP Macro Love

By: admin

admin — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:39:03 +0000

If PAIP is over your head, try SICP. It’s free online. They even have the whole MIT course on YouTube.

For the book:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

To download the videos:
http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

or search YouTube/Google video for SICP

By: Ivar Refsdal

Ivar Refsdal — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:55:46 +0000

I see you recommend PAIP now, oh well. The widget didn’t work at first… Do you have any easier book to recommend? I feel it’s a bit over my head. I’m going to have a go at the little schemer &/ the seasoned schemer this Christmas I think, have you read that one? What do you think of it?

By: Announcement: PCOND | LispCast

Announcement: PCOND | LispCast — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:07:38 +0000

[…] just released a library called PCOND. I’ve posted about it before. You can read about it on […]

By: Ivar Refsdal

Ivar Refsdal — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:41:20 +0000

Hey & thanks for interesting code. Great stuff!

You might want to paste the output from the pcond as well, for those who don’t have the libs to test it / are too lazy. I’m guessing it prints “Ge”.

Also have you read the PAIP book ( http://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence-Programming-Studies/dp/1558601910/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197303058&sr=8-1 )? I think you’d find it interesting if you haven’t.

How about xml/http matching tags easily? And updating them.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:52:20 +0000

Have you read Paul Graham’s book “OnLisp”? I have not yet made it through it, but its reputation is that it is an eye-opening exposition on the use of Common Lisp macros.

It is out of print, but is available for download online:

http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html

Thank you for your videos!

By: admin

admin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:11:25 +0000

I have checked out IF*. I have thought long and hard about it, but in the end I decided that the benefits it purports to bestow (only one conditional to understand and look for, fewer parentheses, and not having to change from WHEN to IF to COND when you need to add more statements) are not sufficient reason to have a new construct. The macro, in my opinion, adds very little. Changing an IF to a WHEN when you no longer need the else clause is trivial.

My PCOND macro does something new, which is binding variables based on pattern matching. It saves many levels of LET bindings that would be necessary to do the matching efficiently. It keeps everything neat and readable — it clearly shows what is bound where and why. If you’ve ever tried to write conditionals using pattern matching, you’d know that it is very messy. Check out the original time-window.lisp code from my Ruby Quiz post to see an example.

By: kenny

kenny — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:52:57 +0000

Have you checked out John Foderaro’s legendary IF* macro? Available somewhere because it is in PAserve. Might even be a link to it on the Franz site IIRC.

By: vincent toups

vincent toups — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:55:13 +0000

So the color you have chosen for code in your blog here is really difficult to read - I am using Firefox on a Mac, if that might have anything to do with it. Its just really low contrast.

By: Time window matcher | LispCast

Time window matcher | LispCast — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:47:05 +0000

[…] [edit: a new version is available, which I describe a bit here] […]