Simon Dobson

I’m a computer scientist interested in complex and self-adaptive systems, where chains of cause and effect can be difficult to establish.

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SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

2024466 points180 comments Software Engineering details

I was talking to one of my students earlier, and lent him a book to read over summer. It was only after he’d left that I realised that — for me at any rate — the book I’d given him is probably the most seminal work in the whole of computer science, and certainly the book that’s most influenced my career and research…

My mental model of setf was wrong

2024172 points91 comments Software Engineering details

Lisp lets programs define new setf forms for assignment. The most common example is from CLOS , where a class like this: