Editing 224: Lisp
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The phrase ''A suffusion of blue'' is a reference to {{w|Douglas Adams}}' book ''{{w|The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul}}''. In it, an ''{{w|I Ching}}'' calculator calculates that everything above the value of 4 is ''a suffusion of yellow''. | The phrase ''A suffusion of blue'' is a reference to {{w|Douglas Adams}}' book ''{{w|The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul}}''. In it, an ''{{w|I Ching}}'' calculator calculates that everything above the value of 4 is ''a suffusion of yellow''. | ||
− | In the comic, Cueball marvels at the fundamental and complete nature of the language of creation that he sees in his dream. In the Lisp programming language, "car" is a primitive (i.e. basic) function that produces the first item in a list. The line "My God, It's full of '{{w|CAR_and_CDR|car}}'s" is a pun, most likely referring to the movie {{w|2010 (film)|2010: The Year We Make Contact}}, the sequel to {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey}}. In the book {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)|2001: A Space Odyssey}}, when astronaut David Bowman accidentally activates a star gate, he exclaims as he enters it "The thing's hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God - it's full of stars!", although he does not say anything in the first movie during the final sequence. | + | In the comic, Cueball marvels at the fundamental and complete nature of the language of creation that he sees in his dream. In the Lisp programming language, "car" is a primitive (i.e. basic) function that produces the first item in a list. The line "My God, It's full of '{{w|CAR_and_CDR|car}}'s" is a pun, most likely referring to the movie {{w|2010 (film)|2010: The Year We Make Contact}}, the sequel to {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001: A Space Odyssey}}. In the book {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)|2001: A Space Odyssey}}, when astronaut David Bowman accidentally activates a star gate, he exclaims as he enters it "The thing's hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God - it's full of stars!", although he does not say anything in the first movie during the final sequence. It may also come from the name of a chapter in {{w|The Little Schemer}} called ''*Oh My Gawd*: It's Full of Stars''. |
In the second panel, Cueball remarks that, "At once, just like they said, I felt a great enlightenment." This is a reference to a pattern of observations among programmers and computer scientists that while Lisp often seems alien or arcane — even deliberately so, even to experienced hackers, even with repeated exposure over time — truly ''understanding'' Lisp in a deep, non-superficial way, results in a profound epiphany, a sudden and abiding ''illumination'' wherein one's preconceived notions about computation and programming are fundamentally transfigured, oftentimes over the course of a very short span such as during a single all-day hacking binge. Lispers commonly describe the experience as being akin to learning programming for the first time ''again''; {{w|Daniel P. Friedman}} (author of much ground-breaking research and many popular introductory texts on Lisp and programming language design) described it as "[learning] ''to think {{w|Recursive_definition|recursively}}''," and contended that "''thinking about'' [functional] ''computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do''." | In the second panel, Cueball remarks that, "At once, just like they said, I felt a great enlightenment." This is a reference to a pattern of observations among programmers and computer scientists that while Lisp often seems alien or arcane — even deliberately so, even to experienced hackers, even with repeated exposure over time — truly ''understanding'' Lisp in a deep, non-superficial way, results in a profound epiphany, a sudden and abiding ''illumination'' wherein one's preconceived notions about computation and programming are fundamentally transfigured, oftentimes over the course of a very short span such as during a single all-day hacking binge. Lispers commonly describe the experience as being akin to learning programming for the first time ''again''; {{w|Daniel P. Friedman}} (author of much ground-breaking research and many popular introductory texts on Lisp and programming language design) described it as "[learning] ''to think {{w|Recursive_definition|recursively}}''," and contended that "''thinking about'' [functional] ''computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do''." |