
Show HN: Lambda speech - martyalain
http://b2b3.free.fr/lambdaspeech/
======
cift
Am I the only one who is utterly confused by what I am looking at?

~~~
nine_k
Did reading the text help you any? Did the word "wiki" make sense in the
context? (I suppose "lambda", "lisp", and "s-expression" are not very familiar
to you?)

No snark here, I just try to understand how do different people read and
understand a copy like this.

~~~
cift
Not sure where you're reading this. All I can see is this page
[http://b2b3.free.fr/lambdaspeech/?view=start](http://b2b3.free.fr/lambdaspeech/?view=start)

~~~
nine_k
Ah, the page I saw initially was pretty self-explanatory, a wiki page
describing things like `{b{i{Hello World}}}` and all the way to introducing
basic Lisp constructs.

It is now taken offline due to too many "stupid people", as the last line
says, apparently due to them vandalizing it :(

The menu which is shown now is much less helpful indeed.

~~~
martyalain
Thanks for your help. The site is still alive.

------
junke
The first time I saw it, I was suprised to learn that the evaluator is based
on text transform: evaluation is a fixpoint where basically each match of
"{[^}]*}" is replaced by its evaluation. The regex ensures values at the
deepest level of nesting are evaluated first:
[http://b2b3.free.fr/lambdaspeech/meca/JS.js](http://b2b3.free.fr/lambdaspeech/meca/JS.js)

~~~
martyalain
You got it. Thanks for your attention.

------
kazinator
Lambda Talk is a language that looks like Lisp, but is based on character
string processing. The code is literally the text you see, with the
parentheses (braces, actually) and all. Evaluation proceeds by term rewriting
using textual substitution.

Similar work:

* James Gosling of Java made something called "Mock Lisp" in the 1980's to support an Emacs editor: Now deleted Wikipedia page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mocklisp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mocklisp)

* Lisp in Sed: [https://github.com/shinh/sedlisp](https://github.com/shinh/sedlisp)

------
JosephRedfern
Beware: The site seems to have been compromised. I'm getting re-directed to
4chan when visiting.

~~~
martyalain
Sorry. I knew that there are stupid people on the net but I didn't think so
many. So {lambda speech} is locked for a while. See you later. Meanwhile, you
could have a look at this one:
[http://lambdaway.free.fr/](http://lambdaway.free.fr/) .

------
nine_k
In short: something very much like s-expressions is applied to create markup
(and likely any computation) on a web page; The pages are combined in a wiki-
like structure.

The implementation is ~20kb gzipped js.

------
WhitneyLand
This project seems very interesting, yet unfortunately I can’t think of how it
could ever be the best solution for a wiki.

It’s said on the site that html and coding are often too complex of an
abstraction for a wiki because so many less technically oriented folks have
use for editing them.

This audience I would guess doesn’t want to hear lambda anything, I doubt they
could ever fully understand the concepts. Not because they are dumb, but
because they have other specialties and by definition are not investing time
to learn the theory.

It’s probably been a while for many people here since they first learned about
lambda calculus, functional programming, or other concepts. But try to think
back to when it first hit your brain. You may have started to do some things
quickly but even for many in the field it only really sinks in over time and
with some continued investment.

I love how there are some undergrad theorems that someone with a middle school
understanding of math can grok and _learn to prove and derive the result
themselves_ in a matter of hours. The simplicity can be so beautiful for what
someone might have thought was scary.

But that doesn’t apply here. This stuff would be scary to lots of people, it’s
made my brain hurt before. Now after however many years I have the luxury of
reading the paper, appreciating the elegant aspects, and even enjoying
thinking off all the connections to other cool concepts. But even for me is
this really the most efficient abstraction?

So I like the design and theoretical aspects, nice work on all of it. I just
have trouble seeing any mainstream use cases as described on the site that
don’t have better potential solutions.

~~~
nine_k
I think there's no _one_ best solution for a wiki, because audiences differ.

Some people prefer a feature-laden word processor, some, a complex language
like LaTeX, and some, the distraction-free notepad.exe. For each group, for
their subject tasks and mental habits, their chosen solution feels best.

I don't see why this approach can't be best for some niche.

~~~
WhitneyLand
Maybe, the problem is they didn’t define the niche just talked about people
who need a higher abstraction. If they did maybe it would be easier to imagine
how a particular audience could be most productive with it.

------
martyalain
Sorry. I knew that there are stupid people on the net but I didn't think so
many. So {lambda speech} is locked for a while. See you later. Meanwhile, you
could have a look at this one:
[http://lambdaway.free.fr/](http://lambdaway.free.fr/) .

------
freecodyx
never submit a free.fr here, it won't be able to handle the traffic

~~~
martyalain
Thanks, but could you elaborate on that, I don't understand why.

~~~
hadrien01
Free is a French ISP, and *.free.fr is free hosting (ie. not made for high
traffic).

~~~
martyalain
Usually nobody visits this personal site. After the short avalanche of access
will return the calm of loneliness :)

And maybe I will have had a few useful feedbacks on this work...

~~~
anacleto
freecodyx is saying that there are high chances that the site will go down due
to the amount of traffic coming from this source regardless of its average
daily traffic.

We've experienced many issues on HN about content that was hosted on Free.

EDIT: as expected, website's is down.

~~~
Daycrawler2
martyalain is saying that (s)he won't go through the hurdle of scaling a
website for a 2-days buzz.

------
thecatspaw
some feedback about the landing page:

\- it looks like a mobile design (text way to big on desktop) \- needs more
room to breathe \- the picture takes up the whole screen (while still
displaying the h1 below the fold)

~~~
martyalain
Thanks. I do agree with you, the design must be improved. It's a summer
workshop. What do you think of this one
[http://lambdaway.free.fr/workshop/](http://lambdaway.free.fr/workshop/) ?

~~~
KineticLensman
On my my mobile device I get some imagery (a face and a building) and text all
stacked on top of each other, making the text very hard to read.

It would be good to have a single clear statement describing the aim and
purpose (what and why) of lambda speech, followed by a description of how to
use it. Otherwise people will give up in confusion

------
rohan1024
OP if not on website could you please post a short description here.

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BanazirGalbasi
Website just redirects to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" on YouTube,
although it stopped doing even that now.

~~~
martyalain
Sorry. I knew that there are stupid people on the net but I didn't think so
many. So {lambda speech} is locked for a while. See you later. Meanwhile, you
could have a look at this one:
[http://lambdaway.free.fr/](http://lambdaway.free.fr/) .

------
_mhr_
Probably related to the Lambdaway / Alphawiki projects:
[http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/alphawiki/](http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/alphawiki/)

~~~
martyalain
Better explanations in this last one:
[http://lambdaway.free.fr/workshop/](http://lambdaway.free.fr/workshop/)

------
IE6
When I click the link nothing renders and after I closed the window and tried
to go back the link now redirects me to 4chan? I guess I wont browse HN at
work anymore.

