[ExI] ai class at stanford

[Samantha Atkins]

On Aug 21, 2011, at 10:01 PM, spike wrote:

> 
> Have we any Lisp hipsters here?

Yes, though does one ever finish mastering lisp?  It is more art than most languages and environments.

Practical Common Lisp is online for free as is the wonderful On Lisp.  The first is a better beginner to intermediate guide.  

> 
> I have been getting back up to speed on my Python coding, but I never did
> study Lisp, and it looks confusing.  

Python, while not lisp, is capable of some pretty neat things.  Have you worked with inner functions, list comprehensions, or generators by any chance?   Passed functions to other functions (higher order functions)?   

> I know we have a bunch of code jockeys
> and gurus of various scripting languages, but who here knows from Lisp?  I
> know Microsloth VBA and have written a lot of code in that, but it is nearly
> useless for AI and isn't object oriented: it doesn't allow user-defined
> functions.  Who are our professional coders?  Samantha?  Others?

Sure.  Coding for bread for over three decades, mostly not in as interesting languages as lisp.    From what I have seen of AIMA code it doesn't used so many advanced features.  Most of its algorithms are available for free code in Python as well as in Lisp.  I doubt it delves deeply into lisp lore. 

- samantha