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Physics in Clojure - Colin Smith

Physics in Clojure - Colin Smith on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2019–2023.

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talk · intermediate · evergreen

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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 recommends it

Recommended as the best introduction to SICM and sicmutils and a showcase of what such symbolic systems can do.

people recommended it
2
separate months
2
strong recommendations
0
discussed on HN
2019–2023
“The Strange Loop talk [3] is a good showcase of the power and simplicity of these kind of systems.”
— hcarvalhoalves, Mar 2021, in “Symbolics.jl: A Modern Computer Algebra System for a Modern Language”

What HN commenters said

3 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

hcarvalhoalvesMar 2021Recommends

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

in “Symbolics.jl: A Modern Computer Algebra System for a Modern Language” · View on HN

ja-85Apr 2019Recommends

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

in “Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (2015)” · View on HN

erichoceanDec 2023Cites it

> 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

in “Why Is Jepsen Written in Clojure?” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Functional programmingFundamental physicsclojuresicmlagrangian mechanicscomputer algebrasicmutils