Impressions of the International Lisp conference ILC2002. The kind of witty commentary we have come to expect from Oleg:

Comparing the Lisp conference with the Scheme workshop a month ago, I got a strong impression that Lisp and Scheme are different languages and communities. I think Python is closer to Haskell than Lisp to Scheme. CL seems to me like a Smalltalk with round parentheses. Scheme community is more diverse. Scheme community seems to value a functional approach. In contrast, CL community seems more pragmatic -- and more ad hoc. The CL code I saw is very object-oriented, very stateful, very Smalltalk-ish.

It is interesting to read a Schemer's comments on a Lisp conference. The languages are so near, and yet so far...

Previous LtU coverage of the ILC.

[Lambda the Ultimate]

Oleg's take on Google (as represented by Norvig) is most interesting. Cowboys? Wow.

1:31:39 PM  #  

Data Parallel Algorithms. A paper by Danny Hillis and Guy Steele.

Parallel computers with tens of thousands of processors are typically programmed in a data parallel style, as opposed to the control parallel style used in multiprocessing. The success of data parallel algorithms - even on problems that at first glance seem inherently serial - suggests that this style of programming has much wider applicability than was previously thought.

An amazing tour of the data parallel programming style, as used in Connection Machine Lisp. The paper doesn't require any special background (no Lisp), and has a very nice puzzle-solving feel. They demonstrate logarithmic-time algorithms for a variety of problems, such as lexing and sorting, for Very Concurrent non von Neumann machines. [Lambda the Ultimate]

8:18:55 AM  #