mlajtos

Fluent is attacking multiple problems.

On the surface, it blends APL and LISP. Making S/M-exprs terse and building “diamond-less” left-to-right APL on top. This part is pretty okay.

In core, unification of FRP and AD as already mentioned. This is mainly to do efficient online/incremental learning. Currently this is a disaster and main source of tech debt. I got some attacks.

Fun and curiosity is the main motivator. Having single system that can do user-editable explorable ML explanations is just cherry on top.

First two seasons of For All Mankind deserve to be on your list.

Interesting. Bird-Meertens formalism? That was directly influenced by APL. In the broader scope — algebra of programs — Dijkstra heavily disliked Backus’ FP.

Very interesting flip! For much of his life, Dijkstra opposed functional programming. He even more strongly criticised FP from Backus and APL from Iverson, which are both very funcional/function-level.

As he said, Java is a mess and any sensible person would oppose the switch from Haskell to Java. I am almost sure he never used any of them. Might have read about them, but highly doubt he run any on computer.

As for the high-level status of Haskell and APL — both languages are very mathematical. Haskell goes very into the abstract realm of computation, while APL tackles very raw form of computation. Semantically, Haskell is way more high-level. In terms of economy of notation and unified concepts, APL has no match.

Oh, he would definitely hate it even more. It was too high-level for his taste.

What I would like to know is how he would bend Algol 60 if he had tablet with pencil that could evaluate it in real-time.

> Maybe, given the lens, I've not given Dijkstra a proper chance to demonstrate a more positive attitude, so I'm open to any suggestions of writings where he doesn't seem like such a grump.

Kinda hard to find where Dijkstra praised something (except Algol 60).

One funny example: he called FORTRAN "an infantile disorder", though he said this about the team behind it: "At that time this was a project of great temerity and the people responsible for it deserve our great admiration.".

On LISP: "LISP has jokingly been described as 'the most intelligent way to misuse a computer'. I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts."

Alan Kay on Dijkstra: "Arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-dijkstras."

Dijkstra's go-to language (pun intended) was Algol 60 (& Pascal) – everything else was shit in his view. Some of his comments:

FORTRAN — "an infantile disorder"

COBOL — "the use of COBOL cripples the mind"

BASIC — students exposed to it are "mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration"

PL/I — "the fatal disease"

APL — "a mistake, carried through to perfection"

He liked his languages and programs to be easily traceable with pen & paper. He always wrote programs on the paper (and proved correctness) and only then into computer. REPL-driven development (what APL pioneered) was a foreign concept to him. He would be so appalled by LLM code generation.

This is a good idea.

Monadic/dyadic case for single glyph works nice only when you have a default value associated with it. For example `√16` is actually `2√16`. Or `log 100` is `10 log 100`. And `-3` is `0-3`.

> In order to provide live two-way video between the lab and the conference hall, two microwave links were used. English also commanded a video switcher that controlled what was displayed on the big screen. The camera operator in Menlo Park was Stewart Brand, who at the time was a non-computer person, best known as the editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. Stewart Brand advised Engelbart and the team about how to present the demo. Engelbart got to know Stewart Brand when they experimented with LSD at the same lab.

Last sentence is epic.

> Actually, it's not quite "ML-family" enough for this post. But it is a remarkably cool project! :)

Fair. Thank you :)