No.7742
Hello there, /tech/ comrades.
I am passing by to let you know that a Matrix chat for /tech/ talk has been created! The chat has been added to the official leftypol community. This chat is meant to serve as a place to talk tech and programming in general.
Come join us! The link is:
https://matrix.to/#/#leftylambda:matrix.org?via=matrix.orgThis chat will also be hosting an SICP /read/ing group. That is, we will be studying the book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" and helping each other solve the exercises. For those unaware, SICP used to be the introductory textbook for Computer Science classes at MIT back in the day, and remains a cult classic to this day. It can be used as a general introduction to programming, but will also be rewarding for those more experienced.
gentooGentoo No.7744
I liked the SICP meme when it was just posted on Patchouli pictures in dead textboards from 2009, now it's just retards trying to seem like le epic oldfag that most probably never read it either.
No.7745
>>7744Also, I'm just ranting, I'll check out the server later. Cheers.
No.7749
Why don't you do it in this thread instead of some external chat? Unless you want to kill the board, of course. Back when I read it, I just posted about it in the /dpt/.
No.7752
would people maybe be interested in reading books that are lore about cybernetics like systems theory and Cockshott? apparently a lot of systems theory people influenced accelerationism.
No.7753
>>7752this is one I was thinking of that’s a little unconventional for leftist book clubs, but I heard this is what influenced Deleuze, who influenced Nick Land.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Machine No.7754
>>7749don’t worry. if we’re feeling generous, we’ll coordinate a raid on our channel and liven the board up.
No.7755
>>7749You can do both. Are you new to the internet or something?
No.7756
>>7755I have been around for long enough to know that people won't do both.
No.7758
>>7756Oh please, you only visit one platform?
Different mediums have different tradeoffs. If I'm gonna help somebody understand a text this dense and literal, having consistent pseudonyms is gonna help with that a lot (this might not be obvious, but different people learn differently, and have different areas of weakness, and building a mental model of somebody is, if not necessary, at least a serious quality of life improvement). There might be reasons to break discussions into different rooms – doing this in different leftypol threads clutters the board. Wanna go back to one of those breakout discussions to copy a code snippet? Oh no, it was on a chan that eventually deletes messages.
There can be more than one online community. It's gonna be okay.
No.7787
On another note, we had a lot of discussions on text editors and many showed interest in learning a "proper editor" like Emacs or Vim.
Considering we'll be doing a lot of Lisp with SICP, I figured I'd crank out a simple configuration for Emacs that sets up a nice environment for working with Scheme, using the Geiser package, loved by Schemers. It also comes with the SICP package so you can read the book from Emacs itself.
This configuration is made to be simple and easily modifiable (unlike Spacemacs or Doom) and can provide a starting base for anyone interested in getting into Emacs. It is based on Witchmacs, and I decided to keep the weeb theme (you can easily remove that if you wish) but have replaced the C/C++ and Java extensions with Scheme extensions, and also modernized some options, since Witchmacs hasn't been updated in two years. Evil-mode (Vim keybindings) are disabled by default, but can be enabled by uncommenting its package declaration.
You can find it at:
https://git.sr.ht/~aabm/reimacsSee the README or ask away if you have any questions.
gentooGentoo No.7788
>>7786That plan works for me. May I suggest Saturday?
An alternative to this though would be we just do the whole thing on this thread, if we're doing it in such a 'non direct message' manner?
>>7787Took this pic right after downloading, basado to say the least.
slavojSlavoj No.7790
>>7786>>7788I am not sure I understand the split between the chat and the board. What discussion exactly is supposed to be here, and what in chat? I generally prefer chat for discussion but the thread would be a much better temporary reference for stuff.
No.7795
>>7790Well with the suggestion of non-instant discussion I would say the board could be used. Things that don't pertain directly to the reading and organizational stuff could go in the Matrix chat?
Since we aim to post in this thread anyways I'm saying it's possible given an asynchronous meeting to just discuss here. Although originally it was meant to be held in matrix altogether.
slavojSlavoj No.7796
I don't mind too much either way, I prefer matrix with any form of indepth discussion personally, but there seems to be interest in keeping information on this board as well.slavojSlavoj
No.7799
>>7786I am biased towards matrix, but I think
>>7795 is a good idea.
Straight book discussions here, but less 'formal' or slightly off topic stuff in the matrix chat.
No.7800
>>7799 cont.
It would allow a somewhat less cluttered space for reference and browsing.
No.7996
Seems like it wasn't written here. We are reading up to chapter 1.2 for the 24th of April, and then we spend the week discussing.
No.8000
>>7996For clarity, we're reading up to, but not including 1.2.
The entire book is also available as a series of video lectures, which can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J_xL4IGhJA&list=PLE18841CABEA24090 . These aren't a substitute for the book, more complimentary. There are a few interesting gags in there, actually, webm related.
No.8001
Can I still join even if I'm late? I did read up to 1.4 a few weeks back
No.8367
Aight, I've read 1.2 now. We reading 1.3 to <2021-05-14>?
I love me some tail recursion.
No.8476
Aight, I've read 1.3 now.
I think we should read 2.1 until 2021-05-21
Didn't know about the average damping method before, but it's pretty much just a low-pass filter, yeah? So it dampens sudden spikes, and lets slower changes through.
No.8821
We've read 2.2. We'll read 2.3 until next friday.
This chapter (2.2) picked up some steam imo. It really goes into procedures as data, and gives some pretty involved examples of how that can look in practice.
No.8838
>>8826I like this anime girl.
No.9172
>>8888Based
I've read 2.4, interesting how you can implement dynamic dispatch through primitive language mechanism. Will be interesting to see how one can implement put and get down the line!
We're reading 2.5 til 2021-06-18
No.9353
This way of using tags to do dynamic dispatch seems like it can become horribly inefficient.
I like how we get to actually play with the type system directly though.
Are there lisps out there with "compile-time" evaluation of expressions?
Or are lispers bound to only developing non-performance critical applications (delegating performance-critical sections to compiled langs)?
No.9358
>>9353Macros are evaluated at compile time. Lisps are known for their awesome macros. You don't get to write any for SICP, but see pic. related for an example.
However, dynamic dispatch is dynamic, you can't do that at compile time. If you knew what kind of data you will have to handle at compile time, you wouldn't need the dynamic dispatch. Fortunately symbols are identical (every time you evaluate 'sicp, you get back the exact same value), therefore they can be trivially and more importantly very quickly and cheaply compared. With a "sufficiently smart compiler" it should be possible to generate very efficient dynamic dispatch. But it will depend on both the Scheme implementation and the code you write. I'm not sure if any actually does it.
No.9365
>>9358Thanks for the pdf, I'll check it out.
What I was thinking of was the fact (with the impl. in the book) that the cost of dynamic dispatch for towers scaled for every operation as the height of the tower grew, which is much worse than the single indirection OOP languages usually have for virtual member functions.
While reading this book, I also thought about the fact that everything is a linked list. Isn't this horribly inefficient compared to classes with contiguous memory, where you can access any member in constant time? Are the lisp's out there smart enough to cope with this?
Don't get me wrong, so far it looks extremely versatile, but the lack of static typing, contiguous data and so on spook me.
No.9366
>>9365Lisp has vectors (which are contiguous). The book's primary goal is not to make you an efficient lisp programmer, rather it is to teach general programming principles via lisp.
I wouldn't judge lisp based on the pedagogical implementations given in sicp.
No.9367
>>9366Good to hear, it's just something my C++ autism has been nagging me about throughout
No.9368
Btw, we're now done with chap. 2!
Until 2021-06-25:
* 3: Modularity, Objects, and State
** 1: Assignment and Local State
*** 1: Local State Variables
*** 2: The Benefits of Introducing Assignment
*** 3: The Costs of Introducing Assignment
No.14789
So I want to read the funny Patchouli book, can I only read it or would it be advised to also try some Lisp on the side as I read it?
No.14790
>>14789You have to do the exercises, otherwise it does not count.
No.14805
>>14789You can read
>>14156 as an introduction to lisp.
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