Re: Lisp and Scheme with fewer parentheses / Mathematica??

In article
<559d62bb-9e82-44d9-b3b6-4abef91e2f47@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Xah Lee <xah@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No Rainer, you don't understand.

Try to get out of lisp mindset, and view things from general humanity.

Alternatively, imagine a alien from outer space is visiting earth. He,
being a alien, don't understand how computer scientists classifed
languages here, nor anything about our hardware such as silicon cpu
and “memories” etc. He, being advanced alien, we assume he understands
advanced mathematics far beyond us. In particular, 1+1 is still 2 for
him, and any implications.

Now, will this Alien, buy your stuff about how lisp is this and that?

Could be.

Also, let's be explicit about what we are arguing here, even in
general there is no clearly defined or focus of a newsgroup
argumentation. But, roughly, in our context, the argument is about,
whether, is it reasonable, to say that programing in mathematica is
analogous to a far more powerful system of lisp's macros.

I don't think Lisp macros are more 'powerful'. Mathematica
(the language and its implementation) works a bit differently.
In some ways you could say that Mathematica is more
powerful (since it transforms expressions by rewrite rules) and
more 'high-level'. There are some similarities to Lisp,
but the core 'evaluation' model is different.

Let me try to describe the main difference:

* Lisp evaluates functions to values or executes special forms.
Macros do source transformation before the code
gets executed (the created code is then executed).

* Mathematica applies transformations to data
as long as their are applicable transformations.

Lisp has a 'simpler' and more straight forward model evaluation model.
Even Common Lisp. That also has some advantages.
Lisp has a 'Functional' core. Mathematica has a 'rule-based
rewrite engine' at its core. This allows Mathematica to easily
do symbolic manipulations like you see in computer algebra
systems.

In Lisp you need to extend the basic system to do that. The
infrastructure is there. This infrastructure has been designed
such these kind of systems can be 'relatively' easily
be written. So Lisp is a bit more low-level than Mathematica.
Lisp has been used to write systems that work in some ways 'similar'
to Mathematica. Examples are Macsyma, Reduce, Axiom.
If you look at Macsyma, you can easily see where the evaluation
model of Lisp has been extended to manipulate symbolic
expressions (like mathematical formulas). Lisp's role
is more to be a straight-forward implementation language
for systems and languages like Mathematica.

There is one part of Common Lisp that I would think
is also 'high-level' - that is CLOS. The rest is low- to mid-level.

So, coming back to your Subject
'Lisp and Scheme with fewer parentheses / Mathematica??'

No, Lisp and Scheme are sufficiently different from Mathematica
in the way how they do computation, that Mathematica is not
a Lisp with fewer parentheses. Lisp, the language, is in some
ways more low-level.

Lisp with fewer parentheses would be more like Logo or
Dylan. Especially the latter.


Now, if you agree that this is the subject as i phrased it, then, i
think you either don't have opion, or, you agree with me. Further, i
argue, that this phrase, is a reasonable interpretation where the
thread is from, more specifically, it is a reasonable interpretation
of what Jon Harrop said, of which Richard Fateman retorts.

Now, if you don't agree that the subject is as i phrased it, then, you
can rephrase it, or explicitly define a subject that we would argue
about. Then, i, or others, can voice our opinion. (or not)

Xah
xah@xxxxxxxxxx
? http://xahlee.org/

On Jan 8, 1:50 pm, Rainer Joswig <jos...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<a4fa6a2d-2eed-4ea9-bb83-d8b27cfe7...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Xah Lee <x...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

2008-01-07

I just ran into a newsgroup post, where the redoubtable Richard J
Fateman (a well-known Mathematica hater) sullies Mathematica by
sputtering computer sciency obfuscation.

Here's the source of the message:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/163eb656becfcab6?dm...

You may want to read Richard's mail again and check what he is saying.

He is basically right.

Mathematica is a rule-based rewrite-system at its core.
That makes it substantially different from the evaluation
'rules' of (Common) Lisp.

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/03_ab.htm

or older:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node55.html#SECTION0090...

Compare that with

http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/book/section-2.6.1
http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/book/section-2.6.4

That's why I said in another posting that you need to understand
the evaluation / compilation model of Lisp.
.

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