Well, It's Winter...

I wrote a paper about the pyramids in Egypt.  A long time ago, after a really serious head injury, I came to realize they were used for astronomy using a mathematical construct that modeled vision.  Because of the head injury, a lot of stuff in my head stayed stuck up there for a lot of years and I couldn't understand why.

Turns out it wasn't solely because of the injury, but mostly because of the doctor.  He stitched me up nicely, but without the neurological consult, it seems I was left to wander broken for a lot of years with stuff called aphasia and amnesia and no awareness time.  And absolutely no understanding why things were out-of-whack.  I feel very fortunate to be recovering, though it's made for some confounding years.

What are you gonna do?

I've finally opened up Android Studio and I'm looking at the code to put packages in place and...got overwhelmed so I came here to take a minute to get centered before easing into the logic.  Packages have implications that go deep into the heart of Lisp.  It'll be nice if this stuff works.  But really, I just want to get each piece right without stressing much as I try it.

I've done a lot of weird experimentation with Lisp over the years so I'm kind of okay if it doesn't work.  I've just found that it's more fun when it's easy to see the mistakes clearly and quickly so they can be backed out if they don't work, or well-documented as each step is verified to do what it's supposed to.  I'm not a big fan of getting lost in my own code anymore.

This Is Some Involved Kind of Complicated

Wow, I don't know how long it's been since I last wrote, because I've been really busy.  I had the "Aha!" moment tonight.  Finally saw how to install the package code into the Lisp I'm writing.  I forgot how the Lisp went together until I was able to sit down with the code the other day.  Hadn't thought about it much, but after a few minutes of thinking on the subway tonight, it became clear.  It's going to go in easy (famous last words).  It's pretty exciting to have control of the internals of the language.  It's a fun and surprising perspective.

Going to install and test it over the next few days.  Hopefully sooner.  But life feels fast these days.  It might take a little while longer than I'd like.

;;; Narf!

"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"

"The same thing we do every night Pinky - try to take over the world!"

Seems like I've got enough to work with to try this package idea now. A stream of gesticulating wildness that strays into the nethermost regions of the nether...um, regions of something anticlimactic here. I've got a little idea and I've got a little code. I'm going to try to install whatever this crap is into the Lisp I'm writing and see what explodes. Nothing should. 

More likely it won't do anything. Anything intelligent, that is. I'm expecting frustration and angst. Maybe crying. I hate wasting time, and attacking packages seems like the ultimate in tilting at windmills. Of course, nobody would know if I wasn't blabbing about it on the internet. This is meant to motivate me because mom isn't the only person reading. Unless she's spoofing Google stats again.

I'm going to report back if this festering pile gets a full head of steam and threatens humanity. Or my sanity, which, like a well-worn shirt, is frayed to the very moment of disintegration.

Maybe it'll work. Though I fear it will end, as so many episodes do, in travesty and hubris.

"Like every night, Pinky."

"Narf!"

The Fun Part Is...

The fun part is thinking.

I just erased the post that I was writing here. It was as incoherently difficult to follow as the logic inside what I'm exploring, so I'll write it again. It's some hard shit. For me. But it's the kind of stuff I like to do. Does that make me masochistic? I wonder sometimes.

Packages work. OOP works. But they don't. But they do. There's something there, in each of them, that needs to be elevated as the absolute truth because we would otherwise be suffering in the darkness of Pascal or worse. And something in each that must die or we'll never make it as a species. That's why I spend a lot of time trying to understand each. Since I want to explore them, I explore them in Lisp.

Well, This Is Awkward...

The deeper I go into Common Lisp, the more I realize I'm just baby-stepping along the path blazed by John McCarthy. In awe. Dude was pretty out there. He was out there and his language and disciples are some scary individuals, too.

Any language that turned Paul Graham into Paul Graham and two of the craziest programming books ever written is worth looking into. No knock on Peter Norvig, or any of the other SLW's who aren't really SLW's, but studious and capable. I remember thinking I was a competent programmer who might have been actually kind of capable. Then I read a post on c.l.l from a giant-brained guy who wrote the language spec and about how he wrote a parser in a half-hour before bedtime. (blink blink). I'm useless before bedtime. And a parser in 30? Yo. That's as sick as anaphoric macros. Want to find some newfound humility? Read OnLisp cover to cover and realize you would *never* have thought of *most* of that. Probably never.

Unless you hacked Lisp.  Then you'd see that's just how all the old timers think, and have thunk, for as long as they've hacked Lisp.  Stepping into Common Lisp is a humbling experience.  In a good way. It's not that there are better languages out there. There might be. I don't worry about metrics like that. I use Common Lisp to think.  Most of the other languages demand my attention.  Lisp is like the friend that's always ready to play.

And the more I think with Common Lisp as the mode of expression, the more I learn that I'm still metaphorically climbing the mountain that John McCarthy mapped out.

Common Lisp has some weird quirks. It has areas of the language that work, and well, but awkwardly. Like a lurchy teenager that's borderline adult and almost does it right, but there's just that one thing that's not right.  Some things don't scale and packages are it.

I think the packages solution I'm working on is, but isn't, necessarily novel. I had the feeling this morning that it has more to do with m-expressions than anything. I just made it up in my imagination right now that McCarthy saw Common Lisp as some kind of mathematical, amorphous wildness that was akin to primordial ooze. Mud. Common Lisp is Mud, and not in a derogatory way. It's up to m-expressions to terraform that mud into cities, solutions, infinity ... and beyond.

Looks good on paper. Still have to code it, but it hit me yesterday that what I may be attempting to write was Common Lisp, but wasn't. But it was. That's when I thought maybe it's a form of m-expressions on top of all that mud and turtles all the way down.

I'm Pedaling As Fast As I Can

I'm working on a description of this package implementation I've suddenly found myself exploring. I freaked myself out this morning, staying up until it was time to get up making sure I was playing with a full deck and the logic was reasonably sound. It seems to be holding together. As soon as I have a reasonable description of the concept, I'll post it here. I'm fighting my brain, which is convinced that what I'm writing about isn't new, has been done, and smacked down for valid reasons that will become obvious as I try to pull together all the details. I hope not. I'm pretty sure not.

More to come.

The Problems I Solve, I Seem To Be Making

I had something to say, but I forgot it.

I was going to title this missive "I'm Writing Packages. What Are Packages Again?", but I decided to create a theme with titles and see if it makes it easier to remember articles by slight variation in title.

Now I remember what it was...I'm an idiot. I start dinking around with packages, functions, and classes, decide I'm going to write a package system and blab about it on the internet. Whooooo!!!

I have to write it now. It could be fun to explore if nothing else.

I was going to write about some of the issues of packages, but while I was reading Erann Gat's "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Packages" I realized it was written for me, the idiot, who needs to learn about the issues of packages again. Because I have to see if what I wrote is any kind of reasonable.

It's fun to write about and imagine it's really real. I hope it really is. Really.