(get-totally-messed-up-by :LISP)

September 18, 2007 in a cappella, clarinet, flickr, found, images, photos, thought, williams

I’m learning LISP for my artificial intelligence class, and it is certainly something of a headache. It’s somewhat slow going, but very interesting and quite a bit different from “normal” programming languages like C or Java. Perhaps the coolest thing is how you can redefine any function you please. This means that, since the vast majority of primitive features of the language are implemented as functions, you can quite easily redefine something like addition to, say, print some silly message about how the computer knows it’s supposed to be adding but it just doesn’t feel like it.

In other news, I’m beginning to realize how much I’m going to miss having a reading/writing class this semester, and I think that writing in this thing will likely be more important than ever for my mental health. My classes are all absolutely wonderful, and even though I sort of miss having lots of reading to do, I am very much in my comfort zone of doing problem sets and writing programs etc. I’ve also taken up the clarinet again on a fairly limited basis and successfully made it through a loonnng week of a capella auditions. AND I got my computer fixed today, which went without a hitch (except for the hour and half it took to convince the Apple people that I was not in possession of a pirated computer, as the discrepancy between certain serial numbers apparently suggested…).

Perhaps most importantly, I’m nicely settled into my room, which now has two new plants and an awesome old recliner, formerly of the short ‘n suite. That’s enough of my ramblings for one night, even though I know I promised before that I would write something interesting soon.

(Photo ganked from follesoe’s flickr stream)

Oh and yes I do realize that this is the second picture of a random guy I’ve posted in a row, thank you very much.