Re: Aha! moments

On 27 Sep 2006 17:12:44 -0400, <xach@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here are a few things that triggered major Aha! moments for me, in no
particular order.

- reading Keene's CLOS book

For 20 years, I've successfully avoided OOP, halfway thru Keene, I
lusted for CLOS. The next program is the CLOS teaching tool.

- realizing that file formats and communication protocols are just
bits on disk or on a wire or sometimes even in memory, and Lisp
is pretty good at generating the right bits and octets; inspired

STREAMS! It's all streams, and lisp rocks at that. In-line filters
and transforms of the 'data-stream', branching and colalescing,
sources and sinks.

- Aha! moments have made complicated tasks simpler and
unapproachable tasks approachable (given the right amount of time
and effort). They take the magic out of things. (Philip Greenspun

s/magic/fear/
s/things/improbables/

- Be broadly aware of the tools available, and don't worry about
immediate application

The tough one. It's too easy to code up a solution to a problem, you
don't think about distributing the answer, since other lispers can
code as solution just as fast.

What advice would you give people who want to have more Aha!
moments?

Write more lisp!


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