merits of Lisp vs Python

[Ken Tilton]

Andrew Reilly wrote:
>>  Each skill seems to have a title, a
> list of annotations, and a list of hints (and a reverse, which I don't
> understand).

There's the problem.

>  That all looks like data.

No, not reverse, the part you did not understand. I do not mean what the 
code was doing, I meant that it was code.

>  Couldn't you do that with a table
> containing those fields, and key it off the defskill argument (or even the
> title?) at startup?

Not the code. In reverse.

>  Then you don't have to worry about re-factoring the
> code: there's only going to be one piece of code, driven by a table.

What if it turns into an SQL lookup during refactoring?

> 
> I only mentioned interpolation because it seemed likely that you might
> want to be mutating these strings to be more specific to what your student
> was actually doing.

Interpolation does not mean what you think it means. :) That's OK, I 
figgered it out. Yes, that is what the program does, it substitutes 
terms from the student's problem to produce a hint or annotation. The 
function is called "expand". Because the text is like a macro. :)

>  I didn't expect that "42" was necessarily the right
> answer...

No, but it so happens any #STR...# token is a literal bit of math 
encoded as an ascii string. That gets translated to proper math notation 
(by which I mean, what you would see in tex output). During template 
conversion. So this hint is just saying to the kid, "Dude, |-42|=42, 
|42|=42, get over it."

> 
> To back out a bit, here, and get back to the meat of the matter: if one is
> using Python, then it's because one doesn't much care about performance,

I'll try again: this has nothing to do with performance.

> and it's reasonable to do expansions, pattern matching and domain specific
> language creation/use at run-time.  After all, that's how the language
> itself works, mostly.

The last example showed the macro inserting code to magically produce a 
binding inside the reverse function. It would be easier to compare and 
contrast with the Python equivalent if someone had posted such, but your 
troops have fallen back to Fort So What? and pulled up the drawbridge.

Peace. Out. Ken

-- 
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm

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