Notices by Don Romano 🍹 (thj@mastodon.cloud), page 7

Writing this Lisp lexer is giving me an epiphany. The output turns out to consist only of 3 different symbols:

Left parenthesis
Right parenthesis
Symbol

Where a symbol is anything except parentheses, a whitespace, a double quote or a backslash (escape character).

For instance, a string (a sequence of character data that shouldn't be evaluated, such as a bit of text) is just a symbol with a quote flag set on it.

The parentheses enclose lists of whitespace-delimited symbols.

...and that's it.

The potential these ADHD medications have unlocked in me is almost frightening. What was once a mild curiosity about compilers and interpreters (software that takes the source code of other software and makes it run) is now a keen interest, and more importantly, I now have the patience to go through with it.

I'm implementing my own Lisp dialect. Lisp is a family of programming languages with a simple yet elegant syntax, consisting only of parentheses and words (S-expressions).

Yes, there's ClojureScript, but making my own Lisp is more educational.

Also, I haven't seen anything about the template literals in ClojureScript.

The idea is to make it extremely simple to throw Lisp code into your JS code.

Some things, such as macros, self-modifying code and DSLs, aren't possible in JS, but are possible in Lisp.

I'm going to make it possible to pass a vanilla JS array to the lisper and have it parse it like Lisp code, among other things.

Working on a Lisp in this Observable notebook:

https://observablehq.com/d/ba676efc233b2615

I have a working lexer, but I'm missing the parser and the evaluator.

Actually, I have an evaluator of sorts, but it was designed with different assumptions, so it needs to be refactored.

When it's done, it should be possible to embed Lisp code in JavaScript using template literals:

let var = 'Some "kind" of string';
let result =
lisp`(list ${var} "two" "three")`;

I'm frankly not sure if he's a bully or just very insecure, but I suppose both are true. He's insecure and therfore he acts condescending and tries to break other people down.

I've also been insecure, however. I feel insecure about things all the time. We all do.

What makes me judge a person harshly is choosing to take it out on others, because it's such an selfish and immoral thing to do. You are choosing to hurt others, just to inflate your precious ego. That's a plainly bad thing to do.

The guy basically said I had autism or was bipolar for asking a married woman out for coffee, and also suggested that we were too ugly for a hot chick like her anyway.

He conveniently ignored the fact that I had told him I was going to ask her out for coffee right after suggesting that *him and I* should go out for coffee.

This should've clued him on to the non-romantic "making friends with colleagues" nature of it.

Man, I thought I would make friends with one of my colleagues. He seemed very smart, and definitely is, but now I can't stand him anymore.

We had a conversation at a party recently, and he basically tried to break me down by playing up my insecurities.

I was drunk and therefore a bit vulnerable, but I did let him know that I didn't like what I was hearing.

When he talks and laughs around the office now, all I can hear is his snottiness. I didn't know there was such a thing as a smart bully.

1. Thou shalt not be a killjoy and spoile a good joke.

2. Thou art, however, encouraged to do whatever thou please with a bad one, for it is alreadie spoiled.

Attacking democracy is easy, but what's the alternative?

Are the right wingers onto something with their accusations of cultural Marxism? Yes.

Are the left wingers onto something with their accusations of intolerance and racism? Also yes.

Am I saying that we should tone it down a little, because being a moderate centrist is the most sensible choice? Definitely.

Is this position too bland and uninteresting to be attractive to the average voter? Undoubtedly.

Someone at a party arranged by my employer claimed that my boss strikes down on any talk of writing code that isn't basic glue code because he doesn't want me to give the other developers any ideas.

He further claimed that yes, my boss does want me to work on the fancier stuff. He just doesn't want anyone else to think they can get away with too, heavily implying that my special abilities grant me certain privileges.

I don't know if he has insider info, or if these are just his assumptions.

A pack of sliced ham that I bought had "Family-Size Cured Ham" in cutesy letters on it. Yes, because the sliced and processed carcass of a murdered cow is so cute and innocent...

I have no illusions about the macabre nature of meat eating. I'm just addicted to meat.

My roommate bought a butane kitchen torch a some time ago. He's no gourmet, but he likes gadgets, especially gadgets that make flames.

Lately, I have started using it to give various microwaved foods a nicer crust. Much of the flavour and texture you get from frying and baking is simply about caramelising the surface.

I hear it's not unusual for chefs to cheat in similar ways if they're running out of time. Using a torch to give a sous vide food a glaze is at the very least not uncommon.

NORMAL PEOPLE: If I want fresh donuts for breakfast, I'll have to go out and buy them.

ME THE WEIRDO: If I want fresh donuts for breakfast, I will microwave store bought vacuum packed donuts and use a butane torch to give them a nice crust.

I'm implementing my own Lisp.

Having never really written anything in an existing Lisp dialect, this is of course hilarious.

The one thing that might set this one apart from others is the fact that the programs are JavaScript arrays.

It sounds utterly pointless, but I do have an application for it: I'm generating some TeX code in another project using nested arrays, and there are parts of it where I wish they could reflect or self-modify, and the code/data barrier is just irritating.

I'm still working on my little tool for interactive mathematics.

The bulk of the code compiles mathematical expressions and their values into TeX code. Parsing and evaluation is provided by math.js, and I traverse the syntax tree to generate the TeX code.

The intermediate representation is nested string arrays. In retrospect, they are basically S-expressions.

I feel like I need macros now, so I'm dangerously close to creating JSArrayLisp...

https://observablehq.com/@thor/math-js-to-tex

Everything feels weird these days. My life is in flux, partly due to my own actions, partly due to external events. The world feels like a different place all of a sudden.

You mustn't spill over cried milk.

@philcolbourn Well, here's the thing... I don't know exactly what I want yet. This is an exploration of ideas.