13K views · Mar 31, 2017 · 40:19 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2019–2023
Colin Smith introduces Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics and his Clojure port, sicmutils. He shows how higher-order functions and a symbolic algebra system can represent Lagrangian mechanics.
Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as the best introduction to SICM and sicmutils and a showcase of what such symbolic systems can do.
“The Strange Loop talk [3] is a good showcase of the power and simplicity of these kind of systems.”HN comment, 2021
“This video is an introduction to SICM and sicmutils”
Introduction to SICM and sicmutils.
Thanks, this is a nice port! I worked through SICM using sicmutils as a backup. The MIT Scheme version sometimes "locked up" on my solutions to exercises and sicmutils did not (the Foucault pendulum problem comes to mind). This video is an introduction to SICM and sicmutils: this video
“The Strange Loop talk [3] is a good showcase of the power and simplicity of these kind of systems.”
Showcases power and simplicity of SICM-style systems.
Computer Algebra is criminally underused - it has the potential to make math-heavy critical-path code a lot more clear, testable, observable and bug-free by design. I feel I need to mention "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" by Wisdom and Sussman, and the accompanying "scmutils" library, which first implemented in Scheme many of the same features, although this Julia library seems to be more complete. There's also a great one-to-one port to Clojure by Colin Smith [2] in case you want to use it on a more production-friendly environment. The Strange Loop talk [3] is a good showcase of the power and simplicity of these kind of systems. [1] link [2] link [3] this video
“And a talk about it's implementation here”
Talk on SICM implementation in Clojure.
> static typing helps everywhere I think "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" is a good example of the kind of software a dynamically-typed Lisp is superior at, beyond the usual suspects like SQL, R, Python, etc. Here's an example of SICM in Clojure: link And a talk about it's implementation here: this video
