#clojure – 2008-02-02

2008-02-02

08:21	scramflot	sweet, there's a room
08:22	rhickey	welcome
08:22	scramflot	thanks
08:26	scramflot	I'm new to lisp. is learning any 'lisp-1' language the same as learning clojure? I get the feeling it's not, from the 'differences with other lisps' page
08:28	rhickey	There will be a lot that is similar
08:29	scramflot	So could I learn clojure by reading a book about lisp-1?
08:31	rhickey	There's one sense in which Lisp is a set of ideas, which you can move around, and another in which each Lisp is a language with it's own syntax and semantics, which don't travel as well. Certainly don't expect to bring code between them.
08:34	scramflot	rgr. Well, I went through the whole website and it's really geared towards people who already know Lisp. Which is cool.. It's pretty early I guess.
08:35	rhickey	I hope to add more material for newcomers to Lisp
08:35	scramflot	When running the argcount example on the functional_programming page, I'm seeing it just return all the arguments
08:36	scramflot	mmm, nevermind
08:36	scramflot	must have been a typo when I typed it in
08:37	rhickey	ok
08:38	scramflot	sweet, works as advertised
08:46	scramflot	rhickey: what other lisp-1 dialect is very well documented?
08:47	scramflot	Or, better yet, a document that teaches lisp-n dialects
08:49	scramflot	I just read that scheme was a lisp-1
09:21	scramflot	reading htdp.. I got a long way to go ;)
09:21	scramflot	anyone still here?
10:55	scramflot	I'm trying to figure out how the make-adder function works on the http://clojure.sourceforge.net./features/functional_programming.html page
10:56	scramflot	(defn make-adder [x] (let [y x] (fn [z] (+ y z)))) (def add2 (make-adder 2)) (add2 4) -> 6
10:58	scramflot	I'm seeing x and z as the parameters being sucked in from the outside, but how is it determining to stick the 2 and the 4?
11:00	scramflot	so the def is "closing over" the value of x after it has been assigned? how does clojure know to reach down into add2 and stick 4 into z?
11:02	scramflot	what if I had another (fn [asdf] (...)) after (fn [z] (...))
11:02	scramflot	how would it know which one to pick from?
11:07	jonathan_	hi, anything happening?
11:08	scramflot	jonathan_: not much.. I was asking a question and no one was hearing me
11:08	scramflot	care to take a stab at it?
11:08	jonathan_	shoot
11:09	scramflot	I'm trying to figure out how the make-adder function works on the http://clojure.sourceforge.net./features/functional_programming.html page
11:09	scramflot	(defn make-adder [x] (let [y x] (fn [z] (+ y z)))) (def add2 (make-adder 2)) (add2 4) -> 6
11:09	scramflot	I'm seeing x and z as the parameters being sucked in from the outside, but how is it determining to stick the 2 and the 4?
11:09	jonathan_	ok, hee hee
11:09	scramflot	so the def is "closing over" the value of x after it has been assigned? how does clojure know to reach down into add2 and stick 4 into z?
11:09	scramflot	what if I had another (fn [asdf] (...)) after (fn [z] (...))
11:09	scramflot	how would it know which one to pick from?
11:10	jonathan_	the return value is a function
11:10	jonathan_	it takes a single parameter
11:10	jonathan_	and adds y
11:10	jonathan_	where y is the x that you originally passed in
11:10	scramflot	oh.. wait.. so...
11:11	jonathan_	forget the x
11:12	jonathan_	you'll building a little box that has a little string that connects to y
11:12	scramflot	you're actually.. add2, one could say, "resolves" to (fn [z] (+ 2 z))
11:12	jonathan_	yep
11:12	scramflot	oooh, I get it now
11:12	scramflot	Yea, cause I started experimenting to try to figure it out, and...
11:13	jonathan_	now, if you have things like that, you can generate a little 'adder' that does anything
11:13	jonathan_	just map it onto a list
11:13	scramflot	I put two (fn [blah] (...))s in there
11:13	scramflot	and the last expression is the one that returned
11:14	scramflot	(one was an add, the other a subtract.. it subtracted)
11:14	jonathan_	yeah, if you do (fn [] (expr) (expr)) it generally gives you back the last one if that's syntactically valid
11:15	jonathan_	I still haven't worked through the pmap example
11:15	scramflot	I did (let [] (fn [] ())(fn [] ()))
11:16	jonathan_	try this ... make a couple of functions, then use (apply (comp fn1 fn2) [arg])
11:16	jonathan_	the comp glues the functions together
11:16	scramflot	comp is builtin?
11:16	jonathan_	yep
11:17	scramflot	you were saying, about mapping lists?
11:20	jonathan_	I did this thing at work for merging lists of date ranges
11:20	jonathan_	they could be timetables, or scheduling or pretty much anything
11:20	jonathan_	but you can build a function to tweak a date range
11:21	jonathan_	and another, and another, then compose them
11:21	jonathan_	then use map to apply all the tweaks
11:22	jonathan_	have you tried the new stuff?
11:24	scramflot	how bout, (defn make-operator [x y] (let [myx x] (fn [a b] (myx a b)))) (def myadd (make-operator '+)) (myadd 2 2) -> 4 ??
11:24	scramflot	nah, this is my first time looking at clojure, and I'm a bit of a spectator programmer anyway.. hit and run thus far
11:25	scramflot	Was that correct? to apostraphize the +?
11:25	jonathan_	you might need to adapt to call plus
11:26	scramflot	I was thinking maybe I should be sending in a function to myx
11:27	scramflot	that takes a and b
11:27	scramflot	no?
11:27	jonathan_	I haven't tried that ...
11:28	jonathan_	but you do (reduce + '(1 2 3))
11:28	jonathan_	^can
11:29	jonathan_	the best source of 'idiom' is probably the boot.clj file
11:29	scramflot	I messed that up.. make-operator should have one param
11:30	jonathan_	doh ...
11:30	scramflot	anyway.. yea? you think a newb can digest it?
11:31	jonathan_	I'm digesting it and I'm a newb
11:31	jonathan_	I fall short of understanding those 'm' things
11:31	jonathan_	but I can just about cope with the STL
11:32	scramflot	STL? C++?
11:32	jonathan_	And I'm more productive in Clojure than ... than ever
11:32	jonathan_	yeah lame 'enterprise' C++ is my thing
11:33	scramflot	I'm an arm-chair programmer.. passing java knowledge, jack-of-a-few-trades.. I'm a sys-admin
11:33	jonathan_	Clojure is a million times cleaner than Perl
11:34	jonathan_	All my Perl code eventually collapses on itself
11:34	jonathan_	I dunno if everyone has that experience
11:34	scramflot	Never had to write perl
11:35	scramflot	might look into the regexs in perl 6 though
11:35	scramflot	looks cleaner
11:35	jonathan_	it'll be dead if you can't run perl5 code on it
11:36	jonathan_	perl used to be my language for doing prototypes and what not
11:37	scramflot	oooh, I did it: (defn make-operator [x] (let [myx x] (fn [a b] (myx a b))))
11:37	jonathan_	cool
11:37	scramflot	(def myadd (make-operator +))
11:37	scramflot	(myadd 3 4)
11:37	scramflot	-> 7
11:37	scramflot	that's sweet
11:37	jonathan_	read the boot.clj file
11:38	jonathan_	it's an awesome into to lisp programming
11:38	jonathan_	^intro
11:38	scramflot	cool
11:38	scramflot	I guess I will then
11:38	jonathan_	defining java interface and having it actually work is pretty sweet too
11:39	jonathan_	the new code in svn has a gui data inspector in 100 lines of code
11:40	jonathan_	have you looked at Arc?
11:43	scramflot	that's actually what brought me here
11:43	jonathan_	I have it installed, has some neat stuff in it
11:44	scramflot	Arc hit the news, then everyone was dissing it and saying things like "what does arc bring to the table? at least ikarus and clojure are doing neat things!" and that made me want to find out what clujure was
11:44	jonathan_	it still has the typical problem that I can't get at Oracle, or build a decent GUI
11:45	jonathan_	* on Win/OSX/Linux
11:45	jonathan_	but with pure java I can do all these things on any platform
11:45	scramflot	You played with gui building in clojure?
11:45	jonathan_	I build in Netbeans, then just load it
11:46	jonathan_	works great, just stick the class on the -cp
11:46	jonathan_	or you can build dynamically
11:46	jonathan_	see inspector.clj
11:46	scramflot	where does the event handling go?
11:46	scramflot	in clojure?
11:47	jonathan_	(. mygui (addEventLister (implement (handler (fn[blah] ...
11:47	jonathan_	implement is a built in
11:47	jonathan_	yep
11:47	scramflot	oh, what does the . do?
11:47	scramflot	(been wondering that)
11:47	jonathan_	java instance methods
11:48	jonathan_	look at the hello world example
11:48	scramflot	the one here? http://clojure.sourceforge.net./features/functional_programming.html
11:48	jonathan_	http://clojure.sourceforge.net/reference/getting_started.html
11:49	jonathan_	(. javax.swing.JOptionPane (showMessageDialog nil "Hello World"))
11:49	jonathan_	method calls go in () like a function
11:49	jonathan_	fields go without the ()
11:49	scramflot	ok, yea... so what is . actually doing?
11:50	jonathan_	calling a java method on an object, or class (if a static)
11:50	jonathan_	showMessageDialog must be a static method, since we're calling it on a class
11:51	scramflot	ok
11:52	scramflot	so, what would be JOptionPane.showMessageDialog() becomes that
11:52	jonathan_	all we need is someone to stitch the java reflection into a table model ... and we'll have a smalltalk style class browser
11:52	scramflot	that would be sweet
11:52	jonathan_	it'd be easy if I knew java libs better
11:53	jonathan_	oh, you want this page http://clojure.sourceforge.net/reference/java_interop.html
11:53	jonathan_	for all the '.' stuff
11:53	jonathan_	.. chains
11:54	scramflot	I fricken love prefix notation
11:55	jonathan_	yeah, me too, and I haven't really grasped macros yet
11:55	jonathan_	in fact at all
11:56	scramflot	me neither.. haven't tried to grasp it yet.. I hear you can build the language with it though (roughly)
11:56	jonathan_	boot.clj is largely built from it
11:56	scramflot	right
11:57	scramflot	I've actually been wanting to try to implement a visual ide
11:57	scramflot	where you build a program visually
11:57	jonathan_	be nice to have it really dynamic
11:58	jonathan_	so you didn't even have to hit run
11:58	scramflot	And the analog I want to use is the file browser
11:58	scramflot	right
11:58	scramflot	prefix notation works well with this idea, cause the whole program can be broken down into a directory tree
11:58	jonathan_	my dad got our first computer, and spent hours typing in a program, and he was pissed because it didn't do anything ... he didn't think he needed to do anything else
11:59	jonathan_	RUN
11:59	scramflot	hahahah
11:59	jonathan_	It was full of mistakes, it wouldn't have run correctly anyway
12:00	scramflot	yea, so.. dynamic like squeak, right?
12:01	jonathan_	I guess, no eperience of that sadly
12:01	jonathan_	look cool
12:02	scramflot	you can use the gui to drill down into the code that is actually running the gui, and change it in real time
12:02	jonathan_	cool, sounds like a Lisp or Smalltalk
12:02	scramflot	squeak is smalltalk 80 I believe
12:03	jonathan_	yeah, I always kinda think the syntax sucks
12:03	jonathan_	it's really bumpy
12:03	jonathan_	from the objective-c perspective (ie. basic cocoa programming)
12:04	jonathan_	squeak looks similar right?
12:04	scramflot	I've only seen it from the gui.. I'm not too familiar with the actual code view
12:05	scramflot	and I don't know smalltalk
12:05	scramflot	I'm only now learning lisp
12:06	jonathan_	I'm really enjoying it, and getting smugger by the day
12:06	scramflot	:)
12:06	scramflot	I can see why
12:08	scramflot	and having access to all the java libraries at the same time kicks ass
12:08	jonathan_	yeah, I kinda do management now, and I spent a few days writing a resolver for fuel rates for gas pipeline in C++, that's the main coding I've done in 8 months ... so I need to stay in practice
12:08	jonathan_	and yes, the java libraries are great ...
12:09	scramflot	I'm a system/network admin for the army.. so if I could find the time to get really good at a language, I could apply it to work.. but it's just finding the time first
12:10	jonathan_	I think it's like anything else, you just have to find a use for it and keep trying
12:10	jonathan_	it is easy ... < 100 lines to put an Oracle table in a Swing gui
12:11	jonathan_	it takes a while to understand, but all the bits are there
12:11	scramflot	I've used the io language (back in the day) to install anti-virus updates on a small network of windows boxes in afghanistan.
12:11	jonathan_	cool
12:11	jonathan_	are there any other good jvm languages ... scala?
12:11	jonathan_	is io on jvm?
12:11	scramflot	no
12:11	scramflot	io is definately cool though
12:12	jonathan_	it looked 'terse' from what I've seen
12:12	scramflot	some say io has some problems, but it sure is sweet
12:12	scramflot	I was coding in it in no time
12:13	scramflot	very intuitive
12:13	jonathan_	Cool, it's been on my list of things to look at for a while
12:13	jonathan_	along with Scala and Lua
12:13	scramflot	The biggest complaint I heard was that it's so extremely reflective and runtime-modifiable that a security model is non-existent
12:14	scramflot	practically any piece of code can modify any part of the system
12:14	jonathan_	yeah, that seems to be an Arc complaint
12:14	jonathan_	though I don't know how
12:14	scramflot	I've studied a bit on scala.. it looks even more verbose than java though..
12:15	scramflot	just not very pretty
12:15	jonathan_	yeah, I have like three Haskell books
12:16	jonathan_	it's really inpenetrable
12:16	jonathan_	Scala looked pretty unpleasant
12:16	scramflot	by that you mean, hard to learn?
12:16	jonathan_	yeah, really finicky
12:17	jonathan_	I really enjoy being able to just try stuff out 'at the prompt'
12:17	scramflot	yea, haskell is the purely functional, no side-effects, etc. right?
12:17	jonathan_	there's various escape hatches
12:17	jonathan_	but in theory, yes
12:18	jonathan_	actually, I write functionally in Clojure
12:18	scramflot	Yea, I'm a bit too intimidated by Haskell to really go after it
12:19	scramflot	any time soon, at least.. If I was in school for it, then sure
12:19	jonathan_	you can do stuff like (assoc mystuff key (assoc (get mystuff key) subkey newval))
12:20	jonathan_	which creates a copy of a hash with one subkey edited
12:20	scramflot	ah
12:20	scramflot	does copying everything cause a memory issue?
12:21	jonathan_	not so far ... I've used that technique with 10 of 1000 of records with no hiccups
12:22	jonathan_	I'm writing a caching data server with undo and shared sessions
12:22	jonathan_	and I'll get fired if the prototype doesn't work
12:22	jonathan_	sweeeet
12:23	scramflot	yea
12:23	jonathan_	so far I've replaced 4000 lines of C++ with about 500 lines of Clojure
12:24	scramflot	wow.. so your really getting into it... how long have you been using clojure?
12:24	jonathan_	whereas before I would have used Perl and DBI
12:25	jonathan_	second week on Jan maybe
12:25	jonathan_	not long at all, it really is an easy language if you can handle the way functions and scope works
12:26	jonathan_	tcl is a bit clojureish
12:26	jonathan_	stick something in ( ) and it gets evaluated
12:26	scramflot	I don't see a lot of '() in the examples
12:27	jonathan_	in tcl?
12:27	scramflot	in clojure
12:27	scramflot	delayed evaluation
12:27	jonathan_	yeah, it certain has less than Lisp
12:28	scramflot	it's just still has it, right? it's just not required as much?
12:28	jonathan_	Yeah Rich has fixed a lot of crappy syntax from Lisp
12:29	jonathan_	like (let ((x 1)(y 2)) (... becomes (let [x 1 y 2] ( ... which reads a lot better
12:29	scramflot	yea.. I'm still on the fence
12:30	scramflot	I think I like it.. but.. it _is_ more syntax
12:30	jonathan_	my only complaint so far is that (apply fn [args]) the [] seems not needed
12:30	jonathan_	more syntax than what?
12:30	scramflot	than just using ( )
12:31	scramflot	as the universal code container
12:31	jonathan_	yeah, and more special forms like . etc
12:31	jonathan_	but it all fits together pretty well
12:31	jonathan_	I have a lot of things work first time
12:32	scramflot	I'm surprised I got that make-operator thing to work so quick
12:32	jonathan_	Plus the performance rocks
12:32	scramflot	really?
12:32	scramflot	sweet
12:33	jonathan_	all the stuff you really do in real code is probably running on the metal in the java libs
12:33	jonathan_	so my JDBC code runs faster than C++ on my windows box
12:34	scramflot	wow
12:34	scramflot	scala is fast too
12:34	jonathan_	Yeah, if it weren't for people hating on Java, the JVM would have taken over the world
12:34	jonathan_	Thanks Microsoft
12:35	jonathan_	<insert bad words here>
12:35	scramflot	what do you think about parrot?
12:36	jonathan_	Haven't looked at it yet
12:36	scramflot	the vm that aims to run all dynamic languages
12:36	jonathan_	Does it have libraries? Does it run all the perl odules?
12:37	scramflot	perl6 will run on it.. I think they're trying to port perl 5 to it
12:37	scramflot	so then both will run eachother's libraries
12:37	jonathan_	if they can slide perl5 onto it that'll help
12:37	scramflot	and they'd like to see python and ruby on there as well
12:37	scramflot	and then they can all share libraries
12:37	jonathan_	but most Perl programmers are probably writing pretty basic perl
12:38	jonathan_	It's horrible to read, and tricky to debug
12:38	scramflot	well, I don't think anyone expects that perl 5 will go away after 6 is out
12:39	scramflot	well, 6 is out now
12:39	jonathan_	yeah, it's just too useful
12:40	jonathan_	It's funny, I always seem to need to connect to a database
12:40	jonathan_	I totally choose languages based on libraries
12:40	jonathan_	oh, for sql lite, there's a pure java one
12:41	scramflot	I think I've heard about it
12:41	jonathan_	check this out http://www.zentus.com/sqlitejdbc/
12:42	jonathan_	it emulates Unix in Java I think
12:42	jonathan_	Just amazing
12:43	jonathan_	The sqlite executable is inside the Java jar
12:43	jonathan_	so you have sqlite on any platform in Clojure
12:44	scramflot	yea.. jetty's pretty sweet too
12:44	jonathan_	Is that the web server?
12:44	scramflot	yea, web-app server
12:44	scramflot	what do they call it, web-app-container?
12:45	scramflot	like tomcat, but small
12:45	jonathan_	Yeah, I need to look into that, I'd sure like to build some web apps
12:45	scramflot	embeds right into your application
12:46	jonathan_	so you would you do web pages? define code to template them out?
12:46	jonathan_	I've been on VC6 since 2001, it's like the web never happened at my office
12:47	scramflot	uh.. you'll have to look into it.. I think jetty does cgi but I think most people use that other java server backend language thing.. forgot what it was called
12:47	scramflot	seen this: http://hsqldb.sourceforge.net/ ??
12:48	scramflot	(about jetty.. like asp, but for java? jsp? I can't remember)
12:49	jonathan_	awesome, thanks
12:49	scramflot	hsqldb is fast
12:49	jonathan_	I've seen the name and assumed it was Haskell
12:49	jonathan_	Don't IBM have something also
12:49	jonathan_	derby?
12:50	scramflot	I think that's something similar.. not sure
12:50	scramflot	hsqldb vs. others: http://hsqldb.sourceforge.net/images/imola_retrieve.jpg
12:52	jonathan_	haha
12:52	jonathan_	what a bizarre graph
12:52	scramflot	yea
12:54	jonathan_	actally, it might be fun to write a sql gui in clojure
12:55	jonathan_	you're 70 % towards most business apps if you have that
12:56	scramflot	hey, if you have any gui/closure stuff built.. example-ware kind of stuff, I'd love to see it..
12:57	jonathan_	yeah, we need to get like a wiki going or something
12:57	scramflot	yes
12:57	jonathan_	plus get the boot.clj file documented
12:57	jonathan_	plus get an index of all the functions
12:58	jonathan_	I discovered compose (comp fn1 fn2) totally by accident
12:58	jonathan_	and memfn is cool too
12:58	scramflot	rich was here before you got here. I asked him about documentation.. he said "I hope to add more material for newcomers to Lisp"
12:59	jonathan_	I think the best thing is to read example code
12:59	scramflot	same here.. my fav format is cookbook
12:59	jonathan_	once you have the (), that's the syntax
13:00	jonathan_	actually, I just remembered how I found Clojure, there's a Lisp user group page where Rich did a talk
13:01	jonathan_	http://lispnyc.org/wiki.clp?page=past-meetings
13:01	scramflot	awesome
13:02	jonathan_	The presentation is really good
13:03	scramflot	NYC huh.. where'bouts in the city is it?
13:03	jonathan_	Dunno, I'm in Tx
13:03	scramflot	I might have to go to one
13:03	scramflot	I'm a couple hours away, but there aint nothing going on up here in fort drum
13:04	jonathan_	yeah, I have something on a website somewhere to get a Lisp group going in Houston
13:04	jonathan_	but nothing yet
13:05	jonathan_	But there's one other language that I do really enjoy ... Javascript
13:05	jonathan_	But it's just Lisp in drag
13:06	jonathan_	I think it can do all the same tricks
13:07	scramflot	hmm.. Javascript might be a great language, but I've been averse to letting any website run it on my browser whenever they want.
13:08	albino	I came by because of the arc posts myself
13:08	jonathan_	you guys have the same story
13:08	albino	heh, well at least we follow up :)
13:08	scramflot	yea, same here
13:09	jonathan_	I was at least hoping for an Arc compiler
13:09	jonathan_	I guess it sort of is
13:09	jonathan_	I'm a convert to the JVM
13:09	jonathan_	Especially now it's open
13:09	scramflot	perhaps I would be excited about arc if I new enough about Lisp in general, but for now I think clojure has quite a few benefits
13:11	jonathan_	the syntax sucks less in Arc, but it seems like it doesn't add a whole lot
13:13	jonathan_	It seems like with concurrency, everyone has to move towards functional programming
13:13	scramflot	actually, io probably got me interested in all these languages.
13:15	jonathan_	and what pushed you towards io?
13:15	scramflot	hype... and then it was really simple to start hacking..
13:16	scramflot	I still play around with it from time to time
13:18	jonathan_	it does look interesting
13:19	jonathan_	actually, it's really easy to port Java code into Clojure, like simple web servers and stuff
13:20	jonathan_	the worst part is ocasional broken library behavior
13:21	jonathan_	and insane verbosity for InputBufferedStreamReader and friends
13:21	scramflot	aye
13:22	scramflot	do you ever juts cut and paste large multi-line code blocks into the repl?
13:22	scramflot	s/juts/just
13:22	jonathan_	Yes, that's how I work
13:23	scramflot	do you see anything wrong with this?
13:23	jonathan_	then build it into a file once it's debugged
13:23	scramflot	(import '(javax.swing JFrame JLabel JTextField JButton)
13:23	scramflot	'(java.awt.event ActionListener)
13:23	scramflot	'(java.awt GridLayout))
13:23	scramflot	(defn celsius []
13:23	scramflot	(let [frame (new JFrame "Celsius Converter")
13:23	scramflot	temp-text (new JTextField)
13:23	scramflot	celsius-label (new JLabel "Celsius")
13:23	scramflot	convert-button (new JButton "Convert")
13:23	scramflot	fahrenheit-label (new JLabel "Fahrenheit")]
13:23	scramflot	(. convert-button
13:23	scramflot	(addActionListener
13:23	scramflot	(implement [ActionListener]
13:23	scramflot	(actionPerformed [evt]
13:23	scramflot	(let [c (. Double (parseDouble (. temp-text (getText))))]
13:23	scramflot	(. fahrenheit-label
13:23	scramflot	(setText (strcat (+ 32 (* 1.8 c)) " Fahrenheit"))))))))
13:23	scramflot	(doto frame
13:23	scramflot	(setLayout (new GridLayout 2 2 3 3))
13:23	scramflot	(add temp-text) (add celsius-label)
13:23	scramflot	(add convert-button) (add fahrenheit-label)
13:23	scramflot	(setSize 300 80) (setVisible :t))))
13:23	scramflot	(celsius)
13:23	scramflot	er. how bout I just get the link for you...
13:23	scramflot	http://clojure.sourceforge.net/features/jvm_hosted.html
13:24	scramflot	there.. sorry about that
13:24	jonathan_	works for me ...
13:25	scramflot	hhmm.. yea, it works now here too
13:25	jonathan_	25 oC = 77 F
13:25	jonathan_	you might have missed a bracket
13:25	scramflot	the first time I pasted it in, I was cutting from the pdf of the presentation
13:25	scramflot	aye
13:25	jonathan_	probably a fancy '
13:25	jonathan_	`
13:25	scramflot	ah, I've heard of pdfs doing that
13:25	jonathan_	the repl doesn't like tabs
13:26	jonathan_	notepad2 untabify
13:26	jonathan_	damn, a repl in netbeans would be great
13:27	jonathan_	netbeans kicks visual studios ass
13:28	scramflot	I do like netbeans the best, but I really want to like eclipse
13:28	jonathan_	I think I tried it once, then moved on
13:29	scramflot	it's just slow
13:29	jonathan_	yeah, netbeans is faster than visual studio now
13:29	jonathan_	mainly because visual studio is so crappy
13:30	jonathan_	Build big .NET projects is terrible
13:30	jonathan_	dependency hell
13:30	jonathan_	assembly hell
13:30	jonathan_	Our apps have to be installed locally now
13:31	jonathan_	It's 10x worse than Java ever was
13:31	scramflot	hmm
13:34	jonathan_	It's a shame because the .NET guy did turbo pascal originally I believe
13:35	jonathan_	I wonder ... if that still exsts
13:40	bgeron	we use delphi at school, but it's proprietary :(
13:41	jonathan_	aren't there a bunch of free pascal compilers that do the same thing?
13:42	bgeron	yes
13:42	jonathan_	That's cool, what kind of stuff do you write?
13:42	bgeron	but they don't do GUI design as ugly as delphi does, which why I must use delphi
13:43	bgeron	it's not that cool, actually ;) last time I had to write a program that drew random points on a plane, then let you rotate/shift a duplicate of that plane
13:44	bgeron	you get the illusion of circles then
13:44	bgeron	and when you right-rotate, then shift right, the circle moves down (because the points down are first shifted left, then right again so there's the center)
13:45	jonathan_	I think that sounds pretty neat
13:45	jonathan_	you're not far off rotating shapes
13:45	bgeron	I'm not sure about that
13:46	jonathan_	graphics is fun
13:46	bgeron	agree, but this did not really extend to graphics in general
13:46	bgeron	the painting routing (blegh, painting) was changed to paint each point twice
13:49	jonathan_	what would happen if you shifted the plane in 3d
13:49	jonathan_	you'd get donuts right?
13:50	bgeron	not with shifting, I think
13:50	jonathan_	sorry rotating
13:50	bgeron	you get a donut if you wrap it or something
13:51	jonathan_	damn, time for a snack
14:40	jgracin	hi all!
14:41	jonathan_	hi, what's happening?
14:42	jgracin	Today, I was trying to figure out the way to implement function "disassemble" but no luck.
14:42	jgracin	Seems that the version of ASM is a bit cut down.
14:42	jgracin	No ASMifier... and stuff.
14:44	jonathan_	I haven't looked at the source ... what does Clojure use that for?
14:44	jgracin	for bytecode generation
14:46	jonathan_	so like recur jumps and stuff?
14:46	jgracin	Clojure instantly compiles all function definitions into JVM bytecode.
14:47	jgracin	when you evaluate (defn f [] 1) it is compiled into JVM bytecode.
14:47	jonathan_	I've been using it for prototyping and I know it's fast but I wasn't sure what is going on underneath
14:47	jgracin	I was trying to see what does the compiled code looks like.
14:48	jonathan_	the actually jvm instructions?
14:48	jgracin	Actually, I was getting surprisingly slow results on some trivial benchmarks so I wanted to check the JVM instructions.
14:48	jonathan_	are you type hinting?
14:50	jgracin	Yes, I am, but I'm not sure if the hints are ignored cause I can't see the code that gets produces. :-)
14:50	jgracin	produced.
14:51	jgracin	summing a range of numbers, from 1 to n
14:51	jgracin	takes very long time
14:51	jgracin	compared to SBCL, and GCC.
14:52	jgracin	and I'm sure that SBCL and GCC didn't optimize the loop out.
14:53	jonathan_	user=> (dotimes n 100 (time (reduce + (range 1 1000))))
14:53	jonathan_	"Elapsed time: 1.572 msecs"
14:54	jonathan_	"Elapsed time: 1.003 msecs"
14:54	jonathan_	"Elapsed time: 0.997 msecs"
14:54	jonathan_	"Elapsed time: 1.559 msecs"
14:54	jonathan_	like that?
14:54	jgracin	Yes. GCC sums from 0 to 2 000 000 000 in 1.7 seconds.
14:55	jonathan_	hahahah
14:55	jonathan_	what kind of speed in raw Java?
14:55	jgracin	and java version is even faster (around 1 second), but I'm not sure what the compiler does to it.
14:55	jonathan_	GCJ?
14:56	jonathan_	or javac?
14:56	jgracin	javac
14:57	jonathan_	wow, that's impressive, but seems like a limited benchmark
14:57	jgracin	Of course, it's stupid, but it was just a sanity check.
14:57	jgracin	:-) a stupid sanity check.
14:57	jgracin	Let me show you the code....
14:58	jonathan_	I've had some great results with JDBC, in fact Clojure makes it pretty easy to build up big bundles of data recursively, and it is really quick
14:58	jonathan_	sure
15:01	jgracin	it's here http://www.inge-mark.hr/~gracin/bm.clj
15:02	jgracin	Oh, maybe it's because of overflow in sum!
15:03	jonathan_	aha
15:03	jgracin	I couldn't have been so stupid
15:03	jonathan_	lol
15:03	jonathan_	Is the 'loop' necesary
15:05	jonathan_	maybe the loop is better than having an alt parameter set
15:06	jgracin	I'd have to have a 'sum' parameter in the function lambda list.
15:06	jonathan_	add a single param form that calls the two param form
15:06	jonathan_	(reduce + '(1 2 3)) must have two forms
15:07	jonathan_	I was really surprised when that worked
15:09	jonathan_	I would have pasted some code but my clip is messed up
15:09	scramflot	(dotimes n 5 (time (reduce + (range 1 1000000000)))) -> java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space ;)
15:10	jonathan_	http://pastebin.com/d53bad58e
15:12	jonathan_	Handles merging date ranges together ... it's a tad long-winded
15:12	jgracin	thanks, I'll have a look. I'm not sure I understand what you said the above, which part were you surprised with?
15:12	jonathan_	doesn't reduce normally need an accumulator?
15:13	jonathan_	arrggg
15:13	jonathan_	(+ 1) = 1???
15:13	jgracin	oh, I see
15:13	jonathan_	it must special case the first call
15:15	jonathan_	The more functional programming I see, the more I like it
15:15	jgracin	I've just check CLHS and it says that the function to reduce must accept no arguments, and two arguments.
15:15	jgracin	(+) = 0
15:16	jonathan_	lol, You are leaving Common Lisp, thanks for visiting
15:16	jgracin	that's probably what Clojure does as well. It's easy to check.
15:16	jgracin	First call is the call with no args.
15:17	jonathan_	user=> (+)
15:17	jonathan_	0
15:17	jonathan_	user=> (*)
15:17	jonathan_	1
15:17	jonathan_	user=>
15:17	jonathan_	so I wonder where that comes from?
15:18	jonathan_	(defn reduce
15:18	jonathan_	([f coll]
15:18	jonathan_	(if (seq coll)
15:18	jonathan_	(reduce f (first coll) (rest coll))
15:18	jonathan_	(f)))
15:18	jonathan_	([f val coll]
15:18	jonathan_	(if (seq coll)
15:18	jonathan_	(recur f (f val (first coll)) (rest coll))
15:18	jonathan_	val)))
15:18	jonathan_	That's the actual code
15:21	jgracin	of course, makes sense.
15:22	jonathan_	yeah, I love that all the neat stuff is in boot.clj
15:22	jgracin	I wonder why CL mandates that the function must be able to take no arguments.
15:23	jonathan_	no arguments = nil? easier to compose ?
15:25	jgracin	jonathan_: nice talking to you. bbl.
15:25	jonathan_	ttl
16:14	jonathan_	(seq (.. interface (getClass) (getMethods)))
16:14	jonathan_	(def interface
16:14	jonathan_	(implement [ActionListener]
16:14	jonathan_	(actionPerformed [evt]
16:14	jonathan_	(print (str evt)))))
16:15	jonathan_	pretty sweet, can reflect into the Proxy0 objects that implement generates
16:30	jonathan_	hey jg, made any progress on figuring out if you can reflect method code?
16:33	jgracin	nope. I've put it aside for the moment. I'm currently reading JVM specification. :-)
16:33	jonathan_	k
16:35	jgracin	JVM code looks very unusual to someone having only experience with x86 and Sparc.
16:36	jgracin	I have some catching up to do.
16:37	jgracin	btw, I haven't solved that benchmark problem. Even without those overflows, the speed is rather low.
16:42	jgracin	this code http://pastebin.com/d5126d011 is 20 times slower than the equiv. Java or CL code.
16:43	jonathan_	haha, we had Sun 3/50's at uni and we ran 3 guys to a box
16:44	jonathan_	that was kinda slow
16:44	jonathan_	20x slower seems like a reasonble trade for 20x easier to write
16:52	jonathan_	Hey Rich, thanks for such an awesome language!!
16:53	rhickey	you're welcome!
16:56	jonathan_	I have a question, can we call the classloader and get access to the compiled 'class' files in memory? (just playing really)
16:57	rhickey	not officially - they can't be serialized for reuse without dealing with the constants
17:00	jonathan_	constants?
17:01	rhickey	literals, quoted things etc
17:01	rhickey	i.e. some of the code really is data and would need to be reconstituted
17:02	jonathan_	ok, what actually comes out of the code generation ... is there a class file in mmory?
17:03	rhickey	yup, plus some data literals that get passed through the classloader
17:03	jonathan_	ahhhh, I should have started at the repl ;-)
17:12	scramflot	rhickey: hi.. jonathan_ helped me out and explained some of the questions I had. Pretty kick ass!
17:15	rhickey	great!
17:15	jonathan_	so if you compile a closure, you have to fixup any outside vars when you load?
17:16	rhickey	every function becomes a class and its ctor takes any closed-over vars
17:17	jonathan_	ahh, that's really neat
17:17	scramflot	jonathan_ brought up a good point. There should be a wiki where we can post up snippets and examples.
17:19	rhickey	I was hoping to use Google code for wiki and issue tracking but they don't support CPL projects
17:22	scramflot	wha? that's wild
17:22	jonathan_	patents?
17:22	rhickey	no they only support a few licenses in order to reduce proliferation
17:23	jonathan_	ah ok (the non-sinister reason ;-) )
17:24	rhickey	just looking now - seems like sourceforge has wiki support, I'll look into it
17:24	scramflot	eh.. sf's community tools are ug'
17:25	scramflot	there's wiki-books too
17:25	scramflot	some languages just link to that
17:25	scramflot	(or open-source projects in general)
17:25	rhickey	I know, I've avoided the other sf stuff other than code/web hosting
17:27	jonathan_	I learnt 10x more playing with the code in boot.clj than reading lisp books, so an annotated version of that up on a web might be awesome
17:27	rhickey	interesting idea
17:29	jonathan_	it's interesting that so much of the language is in boot.clj ...
17:29	scramflot	Yea, with an intro to help someone understand the boot.clj
17:30	rhickey	That's what's so cool about Lisp, just implement the core and then the rest of the language in itself
17:30	scramflot	the syntax, etc... like, for instance, it could be because I'm so unfamiliar with functional languages in general, but... I had to ask jonathan_ about:
17:30	jonathan_	memfn and comp in the resultset-seq code ... I had to go runing to boot.clj to find out what that was all about
17:30	scramflot	(defn make-adder [x] (let [y x] (fn [z] (+ y z))))
17:31	scramflot	now, after his explaining, I understand that add2 simply resolves to (fn [z] (+ 2 z))
17:31	rhickey	I think every function is documented on the web site now (memfn, comp etc)
17:32	jonathan_	cool, does that include namespaces now ...
17:32	rhickey	yes, functions returning functions is a higher order thing you might not see much outside of functional/lisp languages
17:33	rhickey	not namespaces yet, I try to keep the docs in sync with the release so people downloading don't get mixed messages - I hope to make a release soon
17:34	jonathan_	ah ok, of course, that makes sense
17:34	scramflot	I've seen namespaces talked about, in the reference maybe?
17:35	rhickey	they've been greatly enhanced recently, so are due for a doc update
17:35	rhickey	I put a decent description in a message on the google group
17:36	scramflot	ah, that'd be it then
17:36	jonathan_	yep, and I noticed that class has gone away
17:37	rhickey	not needed, just use the classname
17:37	jonathan_	yeah nice
17:37	jonathan_	Errr, yeah, I had a question: If I had a server that serves as a 'cache' for some data in an Oracle db, how would I sensibly access that and update it ... I was just (def cache ...) ing it, which works, but it seems like I'd want to put it in a ref or something?
17:38	jonathan_	*it = the bundle of hashes
17:38	rhickey	Yes, use a ref - which you can put in a var - (def cache (ref {}))
17:40	jonathan_	cool, having Clojure makes prototyping even business software fun
17:41	jonathan_	and pure Java oracle drivers are just icing
17:42	scramflot	for add2, is it possible to reach return a copy of add2, changing the value of 2 to 3?
17:43	rhickey	you can't 'get at' the closed-over locals in a fn - fn values are opaque
17:43	jonathan_	unless you write an accessor and return that?
17:44	scramflot	but can I copy, changing a closed over value, without rewriting the whole function?
17:44	scramflot	so, return a new function, with a different value
17:44	rhickey	Not exactly sure - what code do you want to write?
17:46	scramflot	well, I'm just thinking about it.. listened to some of your talk a while ago actually.. and you said something like "lispers are used to being able to type into the repl, change the code, and polish the product" etc, etc.. something like that
17:47	scramflot	I'm wondering how I'd modify a buggy function without having to rewrite the whole thing
17:48	rhickey	Ah - ok. If some fn bar calls foo, and you redefine foo, the next call to bar will use the new foo.
17:48	rhickey	try it
17:50	scramflot	oh, so keep functions relatively small... the group of functions modular.. and it's easily modifiable. But returning a new function with one of it's values changed isn't what it's about, right?
17:51	rhickey	Right, the "values" of the function are private to it
17:53	jgracin	scramflot: One keeps the source of functions in the editor which is connected to the repl and then you don't actually rewrite anything. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious.
17:54	jgracin	you change the stuff in the editor and send the new definition to the REPL, i.e. the Lisp image.
17:54	scramflot	jgracin: yea, I'm tracking that it can be done that way... be back in a min.. to get deeper at my curiousity here
17:57	jonathan_	is there a way to use SLIME?
17:58	jonathan_	or similar?
17:58	jgracin	jonathan_: I use Clojure mode and paredit.
17:59	rhickey	not right now - someone who knows more about the protocol might take a crack at it. I'm hoping the new first-class namespaces will facilitate things like that.
18:00	jonathan_	Yeah, I just paste from TextEdit or notepad2 right now
18:01	jgracin	rhickey: the ASM in the Clojure sources is a stripped down version 3.0, am I right? I cannot find some classes like ASMifier... and stuff.
18:02	jgracin	jonathan_: Clojure mode uses inferior-mode, so it's much easier than copy-paste.
18:02	rhickey	right - subset of ASM to keep the size down.
18:03	rhickey	with debug off clojure.jar is < 250k
18:03	jgracin	rhickey: I was trying to write a "disassemble" function but I failed. Do you think it's achievable with what's currently in the Clojure?
18:04	rhickey	Nope, but it's possible to see what's going on by:
18:04	rhickey	putting full ASM in your classpath,
18:05	rhickey	swap the import comments on the top of Compiler.java,
18:06	rhickey	swapping the cv initialization with the line below in Compiler.FnExpr.compile()
18:07	rhickey	Then Clojure will spew full disassembly of everything it compiles (i.e. my dirty laundry :)
18:08	rhickey	That's what I do to debug code-gen
18:10	jgracin	Cool, thanks, I'll try that. Have you considered adding this functionality to the main code?
18:11	rhickey	yes, unfortunately it doubles the size of ASM's contribution to Clojure's size (it's almost 50% right now)
18:13	scramflot	back.. so can you do something like: (defn make-operator [x] (let [myx x] (fn [a] (let [mya a] (myx mya b))))) ?
18:13	scramflot	embedding a let inside a let
18:13	scramflot	and a function inside a function
18:16	jgracin	Bed time for me. Bye all!
18:17	rhickey	you can, but I wonder if make-adder hasn't set you off on the wrong track - most functions are defined directly with defn and not by a function-defining-function like make-adder
18:18	scramflot	I'm not under the impression that that is prescribed method of function composition.. I was just wondering about how deep one could layer the closures
18:19	rhickey	indefinitely deep
18:20	scramflot	doing so too deeply would result in brittle code though, right?
18:21	rhickey	yes, the deeper you get the more difficult it becomes to independently test the parts
18:21	scramflot	cause you can't really modify the nested structure much
18:22	rhickey	you can't modify it at all - all those locals are immutable
18:24	jonathan_	I've been surprised at how quick it is to use assoc to generate updated copied of hashes ... that completely rocks
18:26	rhickey	HotSpot can do a great job optimizing all of the final stuff in the persistent classes
18:27	jonathan_	yeah I always like to write the simplest functional type code ... and it's always been plenty fast so far
18:27	jonathan_	try to anyway
18:31	jonathan_	do you know of any interesting uses of Clojure yet Rich?
18:32	rhickey	None I can talk about, but I was thinking of asking on the group
18:34	jonathan_	That'd be cool, it seems like there's a few people coming and looking around, esp. with all the Arc buzz going on
18:35	rhickey	Yup, the arc release has caused people to look at Clojure
18:37	rhickey	I think Clojure has more to offer, but I'm biased :)
18:38	jonathan_	I completely agree ... the indexers, refs, stm mainly stuff I haven't got to yet, but I've written a GUI in 500 lines that kicks the ass of 4000 lines of C++ ... so I'm pretty sold
18:39	jonathan_	great for prototyping ideas that people don't think can be made to happen ...
18:40	jonathan_	though a simple undo/redo stack is considered 'impossible' at my company, as are 'splitters' in a GUI .... it's like a research project
18:40	rhickey	Well, keep blogging about your success with Clojure - it helps
18:41	jonathan_	I sure will, I honestly haven't ever enjoying writing code as much .... only Javascript comes close
18:41	jonathan_	oh, why is [] required on apply ?
18:41	jonathan_	for the args
18:42	rhickey	The last arg to apply must be a collection/seq - is that what you mean?
18:43	jonathan_	right
18:43	jonathan_	sorry phrased it badly, couldn't apply be & rest ?
18:45	rhickey	then it would only collect args and still not give you a way to apply a fn to an arglist already in hand.
18:45	jonathan_	ok, I'll go read the code ... ohhh I think I understand, thanks
18:46	rhickey	Dinner time here - bye all!
18:46	jonathan_	k byee
23:11	rhickey	I added a Clojure Programming book to wikibooks.org - just an outline right now
23:27	jonathan_	wow, that's awesome
23:28	jonathan_	I'll go take a look
23:31	jonathan_	what's it under Rich? I can't see anything
23:31	rhickey	http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure_Programming
23:33	jonathan_	cool, just needs some content :)
23:34	rhickey	yup
23:37	jonathan_	I've been in a greek restaurant for the last 3 hours, so I'm a tad dazed
23:38	rhickey	today is over for me, bye all