Coding, Data Science, A.I. catch-All

[superrific]

I had to learn lisp in an AI course.

This was around 2000 or so when AI was considered a dead field. My first attempt at lisp I tried to make it like a non-lisp program. Never got the utility of it but I didn’t really care at the time.

That's what everyone does with LISP. That's what I mean by it being counter-intuitive. We think about telling people what to do in list format (first, do this; then this; then this) which is why Iterative languages make sense. computer, do this first, then this, etc. LISP proceeds by computation. It's one giant mathematical expression that can resolve and in the process, do useful things. It's foreign.

My first class in Scheme, the after-lecture lab was wild -- 15 people squawking like chickens, because they always found programming easy and now couldn't figure out how to do simple algorithms. After an hour or so, one by one it started clicking for us. Once you got it, the assignments took like 15 minutes. It was the getting it that was hard, but we all did get it.

 

[UNCatTech]

I had to learn lisp in an AI course.

This was around 2000 or so when AI was considered a dead field. My first attempt at lisp I tried to make it like a non-lisp program. Never got the utility of it but I didn’t really care at the time.

As for AI advances, one day we will get to the point where AI will design AI (not just help but do it) and that will be the end game. If that AI isn’t AGI then it will be soon.

Note: I don’t really know. Just throwing that last paragraph in for discussion.

Yea, LISP doesn't fit the procedural programming model or even object oriented model.