dvanhorn @ λ-calcul.us » Poetry

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

dvanhorn — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 03:11:48 +0000

“that dent you’ve made is called a Ph.D.”

The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D., Matt Might

Fun with Unicode and delimited continuations

dvanhorn — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:27:01 +0000

Doug Orleans’ cute program to compute roots of quadratic equations:

(define (± x y)
  (shift k (values (k (+ x y)) (k (- x y)))))

(define (quadratic-formula-roots a b c)
  (reset (/ (± (- b) (√ (- (² b) (* 4 a c))))
	    (* 2 a))))

Summer School on Logic and Theorem Proving in Programming Languages

dvanhorn — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:27:24 +0000

If you wanted to learn about formalizing PL metatheory, you’d be hard pressed to find better teachers than Bob Harper or Stephanie Weirich. And if you wanted to reason about programs with ACL2, Pete Manolios is your man. Unfortunately for you, these folks teach at geographically diverse universities (not to mention your SAT score wouldn’t get you in to any of them). But if you can make it out to Eugene, Oregon in late July, you can catch these and the other outstanding lecturers that are going to be speaking at this year’s Summer School on Logic and Theorem Proving in Programming Languages at the University of Oregon.

I went to a UofO summer school in 2003 and really enjoyed it. This sort of thing is great for junior graduate students; they give you a broad overview of topics from the world’s best researchers. It’s great if you’re not sure what you want to work on, or if you want to build up your theoretical tool kit. Later in your studies, you won’t have time for this kind of breadth. Also, don’t expect to digest all of it. I know I didn’t. But hopefully you’ll get something in your head. Years later when you’re deep in the throes of research you’ll have an “ah-ha” moment, deja vu sets in, and you realize that’s what they were talking about. It’s a really good feeling to realize I get it, now. But don’t worry, this brief moment of solace is quickly replaced by the more worrisome thought, why didn’t I figure this out sooner? When this sets in, I recommend keeping in mind Piet Hein’s T.T.T.:

Put up in a place
where it’s easy to see
the cryptic admonishment
T.T.T.
When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb,
it’s well to remember that
Things Take Time.

(With thanks to Olivier Danvy for sharing this Grook, long before I knew what it meant.)

A Bukowski poem

dvanhorn — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:32:09 +0000

Undoubtedly, my favorite poet is Charles Bukowski. Here is “16-bit Intel 8088 chip,” one of the few poems of his having to do with computers. I’m rather fond of it.

with an Apple Macintosh
you can’t run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can’t read each other’s
handwritting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can’t use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

[1986,book] bibtex

C. Bukowski, You get so alone at times it just makes sense, Black Sparrow Press, 1986.

@BOOK{bukowski_alone, author = {Charles Bukowski}, title = {You get so alone at times it just makes sense}, publisher = {Black Sparrow Press}, year = 1986 }