How Sussman Achieved Satori

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

So Sussman began working on a program. Not long after, this odd-looking bald guy came over. Sussman figured the guy was going to boot him out, but instead the man sat down, asking, "Hey, what are you doing?" Sussman talked over his program with the man, Marvin Minsky. At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions. Minsky said, "Well, it has them, it's just that you don't know what they are." It was the most profound thing Gerry Sussman had ever heard. And Minsky continued, telling him that the world is built a certain way, and the most important thing we can do with the world is avoid randomness, and figure out ways by which things can be planned. Wisdom like this has its effect on seventeen-year-old freshmen, and from then on Sussman was hooked.

In the days when Guido was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am designing a programming language", Guido replied.
"How will you delimit the blocks?", asked Minsky.
"I will use curly brackets", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?" Guido asked his teacher.
"So that the indentation will be forced."
At that moment, Guido was enlightened.

>>3
"I will use curly brackets", Sussman said.
Hey, what was Sussman doing there?

I'm currently watching the 2nd video of the SICP lecture.  Last video was Abelson but now I get to see the Sussman speaking his words for the first time.

I honestly think you should stop watching all that crap and become REAL PROGRAMMERS instead. That theoretical-only stuff is obsolete and so useful only for forging memes. The only thing that actually works is talent and experience.

>>6
I think learning Lisp will be a good experience for me.

>>7
Oh, come on... nobody writes lisp today. Focus on C and Assembly if you work at low level, on Java, Javascript and Python if you work at high level. Focus on the UNIX.

Don't waste your time and resources in learning a dead language like lisp. The functional paradigm is dead. You can find it only in the academic context, where you will not program.

Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.

>>9
Yes, whatever. Also 提.

>>10
Who are you calling Tutumi, buddy?

>>7
Lua/Ruby would be more useful.

>>9

I tried Scheme. I'd like some enlightenment on call/cc...

>>4
Are you saying there there is any story om earth where the Sussman does not belong?

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely  —having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the Sussman. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself longing to read my SICP today, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to be an expert Scheme programmer, and methodically knocking people's hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Randall throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the Lisp. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the Lisp languages with me.

>>13
Have you tried reading http://community.schemewiki.org/?call-with-current-continuation ? This was one of the articles that finally helped me understand continuations there were others, but I can't remember them ATM

>>16
Basically contiunations are named gotos that do flow book-keeping.

Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.
When do I get to reach this moment?

>>18
If you're lucky you'll reach it more than once. I've reached it 3 times already.

>>18
For many months the Lisp advocates pressed on. I was baffled. Many extremely intelligent people I knew and had much respect for were praising Lisp with almost religious dedication. There had to be something there, something I couldn't afford not to get my hands on! Eventually my thirst for knowledge won me over. I took the plunge, bit the bullet, got my hands dirty, and began months of mind bending exercises. It was a journey on an endless lake of frustration. I turned my mind inside out, rinsed it, and put it back in place. I went through seven rings of hell and came back. And then I got it.

The enlightenment came instantaneously. One moment I understood nothing, and the next moment everything clicked into place. I've achieved nirvana. Dozens of times I heard Eric Raymond's statement quoted by different people: "Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." I never understood this statement. I never believed it could be true. And finally, after all the pain, it made sense! There was more truth to it than I ever could have imagined. I've achieved an almost divine state of mind, an instantaneous enlightenment experience that turned my view of computer science on its head in less than a single second.

That very second I became a member of the Lisp cult. I felt something a ninjitsu master must feel: I had to spread my newfound knowledge to at least ten lost souls in the course of my lifetime. I took the usual path. I was rehashing the same arguments that were given to me for years (only now they actually made sense!), hoping to convert unsuspecting bystanders. It didn't work. My persistence sparked a few people's interest but their curiosity dwindled at the mere sight of sample Lisp code. Perhaps years of advocacy would forge a few new Lispers, but I wasn't satisfied. There had to be a better way.¹

-
References:
1. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html

>>18
For me it was the following function definition:
(define (nonterminals grammar)
  (map car grammar))

Perhaps years of advocacy have forge the few new Lispers, but doing wasn't satisfied. There had we be the better way.

>>18
You don't want to. Stay in the phase where you get to use Lisp a lot.

>>23
Why would I not want to?

>>23
I don't see why you would use Lisp less after reaching some form of enlightment. I think I use Lisp even more these days, and use it better after understanding most of the important concepts.

Lisp is really nice.

>>17

What I don't get, though, is the fact that we're supposed to use passed continuations as objects, though...

>>27
No, you're supposed to use closures as objects.

(define (newBusinessCard name- rank- serial-number-)
  (lambda (cmd . args)
    (define (set-name! foo) (set! name- foo))
    (define (name) name-)
    (define (set-rank! foo) (set! rank- foo))
    (define (rank) rank-)
    (define (set-serial-number! foo) (set! serial-number- foo))
    (case cmd
      ('set-name! (set-name! . args))
      ('name (name))
      ('set-rank! (set-rank! . args))
      ...
; You get the idea

>>28
Whoops, didn't actually mean to sage

>>28
You're really not very good at Lisp... I could write that in three lines not counting my thirty lines of macros

>>30
I could write it in two
(define-prototype newBusinessCard
  (name rank serial-number))
It's my special blend

>>28,31
why the weird case?


(define-prototype new-business-card
  (name rank serial-number))

>>32
There is a smaller travel time and distance to type in Camel Case style.

>>33
Not true. One can prepare for typing “u” while typing “b”, but not while typing “B”.

You can't see this... Wait you can.

>>8
Oh, come on... nobody writes lisp today.
Hi, I can tell you that LISP is still highly relevant.  I wrote a web application in LISP in the 1980's and sold it to Yahoo who then rewrote it in Enterprise-grade Java.  See, proof right there.

>>36
Say does sepples have lambda yet?

>>37
I think they did hack something like that in, and of course as with much such features added to SEPPLES, it was quite a hack.

>>37
$ cat blocks.cc
#include <iostream>

void doStuff (void (^log) (std::string))
 {log ("doing stuff") ;}

int main ()
 {doStuff(^(std::string message)
           {std::clog << message << std::endl ;}) ;
  return 0 ;}
$ c++ -o blocks blocks.cc
$ ./blocks
doing stuff
$ cat blocks2.cc
#include <iostream>

void do_stuff (void (^log) (std::string))
  {log ("doing stuff") ;
   log ("doing more stuff") ;}

void (^) (std::string) make_logger (std::ostream &stream)
  {int message_count = 0 ;
   return ^(std::string message)
           {stream << (++ message_count) << ". "
                   << message << std::endl ;} ;}

int main ()
  {do_stuff (make_logger (std::clog)) ;
   return 0 ;}
$ c++ -o blocks2 blocks2.cc
blocks2.cc:7: internal compiler error: Segmentation fault
Please submit a full bug report,
with preprocessed source if appropriate.
See <URL:http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter>; for instructions.

#████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

>>40
I enjoyed you're post.

>>41
Enjoy this! *grabs dick*

>>42
bitches and hoes

>>41
What about my am post?

A physicist, an engineer, and a computer scientist were discussing the

nature of God. “Surely a Physicist,” said the physicist, “because

early in the Creation, God made Light; and you know, Maxwell's

equations, the dual nature of electromagnetic waves, the relativistic

consequences...” “An Engineer!,” said the engineer, “because

before making Light, God split the Chaos into Land and Water; it takes a

hell of an engineer to handle that big amount of mud, and orderly

separation of solids from liquids...” The computer scientist

shouted: “And the Chaos, where do you think it was coming from, hmm?”

—Anonymous

A physicist, an engineer, and a computer scientist were discussing the

nature of God. “Surely a Physicist,” said the physicist, “because

early in the Creation, God made Light; and you know, Maxwell's

equations, the dual nature of electromagnetic waves, the relativistic

consequences...” “An Engineer!,” said the engineer, “because

before making Light, God split the Chaos into Land and Water; it takes a

hell of an engineer to handle that big amount of mud, and orderly

separation of solids from liquids...” The computer scientist

shouted: “ONE WORD: FORCED INDENTATION OF CODE, THREAD OVER. MY OTHER CAR IS A CDR! I put on my robe and my wizard hat. hax my anus”

—Anonymous

>>46
LOLed

Although many initially believed her impossible for computers themselves could actually be next scientific field such as study, with was late fifties her gradually became accepted among was greater academic population.

>>46 deserves a bump.

>>49
No, you don't.

wat

55 Name: Anonymous 2011-01-31 20:41

<-- check em dubz