HN Explorer

39 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] thread
gwern
A regrettable name. Everyone who sees it will assume that it's something like 'a startup self-help book'.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
dang
I've attempted to disambiguate it with a s/C/c/g. That's too subtle for most first glances, but I think most HN readers will understand it on a second or third look.

Combinators are always welcome on HN!

hayley-patton
Omega combinators would have made for better growth hacking.
phoe-krk
Author here. Didn't expect this one on HN tonight, so AMA I guess.
Lerc
Preserve it well and you might one day really confuse an archeologist.
phoe-krk
The original is hanging somewhere in a university in Germany. They'll take decent care of it, I presume.
ikari_pl
how did it end up there?
phoe-krk
AFAIR it was sent there after an auction during the online European Lisp Symposium 2021.
senko
Beautiful!

Any plans on selling prints again (or perhaps the site you mentioned for the '21 Lisp conference still active)?

(edit to add: I realize this is handcrafted art, was wondering if you have high-res scans you'd consider selling as prints)

phoe-krk
Oh goodness. If you really want one, I could produce some. Poke me at phoe@disroot.org and we'll arrange for that.

(Yes, I do have a scan!)

varjag
Amazing work, not sure how I missed that!
phoe-krk
Thanks. I didn't really promote this outside #commonlisp on IRC and Hacker News (linked by dang earlier).
ellis0n
Incredible paper! Can you help me make something similar for the ACPUL programming language?
phoe-krk
Ping me at phoe@disroot.org and let's get to it!
deruta
Congrats on finding time! Maybe this will push me to get back to my nib stash, ha.

Got any experience with adapting fountain pen inks for calligraphy?

phoe-krk
Not really. I used Pilot Parallel pens exclusively for doing this piece, so I avoided most of the nib problems (and experience) myself.
raldi
It's beautiful, but isn't a codex a book? I thought that's what separates them from scrolls.
phoe-krk
Yes, it should be a book. I didn't change the original title of emacsomancer's work; his original typeset image could have easily made it into a book, whereas my version suffers from some size inflation.
aagha
What made you want to do this?
phoe-krk
The inspiration is linked in the article - I saw emacsomancer's machine-typeset Y Combinator Codex and I thought, "oh, I'll show you the Y Combinator Codex". The rest is about two weeks of intermittent calligraphic work.
vinnyvichy
Nice to see that yin-yang of eval/apply floating in a sea of King James 1611
dirtybirdnj
this is amazing work, looks hand done. can't imagine the time that goes into something like this, just figuring out how to compose it... and not making mistakes?!

very cool

phoe-krk
An important part of doing calligraphy (or any other work where Ctrl+Z is not an option) is improvising of how to cover things up so that such mistakes become invisible.

I have actually made a huge mistake in the original, and then managed to cover it up. (Hint: the metallic paint I used is highly opaque.)

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
tromp
Curiously, in the pure lambda calculus with Church numerals, the factorial function doesn't need recursion, since Church numerals already act like iterators: fac = λn.λf.n(λf.λn.n(f(λf.λx.n f(f x))))(λx.f)(λx.x) or as a lambda diagram:

    ┬────────────────
    ┼─────────────┬──
    │ ──┬──────── ┼ ┬
    │ ┬─┼─┬────── │ │
    │ │ │ ┼─┬─┬── │ │
    │ │ │ ┼─┼─┼─┬ │ │
    │ │ │ └─┤ ├─┘ │ │
    │ │ │   ├─┘   │ │
    │ │ ├───┘     │ │
    │ ├─┘         │ │
    └─┤           │ │
      └───────────┤ │
                  └─┘
nathell
Next time I'm in Kraków I'd like to buy you a beer, sir.
phoe-krk
Sure! (A non-alcoholic one, please.)
mynameisnoone
Should sell mostly prints but some originals on Etsy.
phoe-krk
I have no time nor will to make this a part-time job. Burnout is a real thing, hence I don't want to turn all of my hobbies into money-making machines.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)