

Lisp in a single expression  - muriithi
http://thinkpython.blogspot.com/2008/02/lisp-in-single-expression.html

======
ghiotion
I love this, but it's an awful lot of complexity to print '9' to stdout. The
first time I ran it through a python interpreter, I thought I made a mistake.

~~~
apgwoz
I bet you think computing prime numbers with Church Numerals is complex too!
:)

~~~
ghiotion
See, this is why I love this place so much. I'd never heard of Church Numerals
before. From the wikipedia entry:

>Many students of mathematics are familiar with Gödel numbering members of a
set; Church encoding is an equivalent operation defined on lambda abstractions
instead of natural numbers.

Utter clarity. Or, at least as clear as the python code the original post
points to :-)

~~~
llimllib
go out and buy Godel, Escher, Bach: Eternal Golden Braid. Right now!

It will make your life better.

~~~
ghiotion
I've always meant to pick that up. Looks like google books has a decent online
copy:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=aFcsnUEewLkC&dq=godel+e...](http://books.google.com/books?id=aFcsnUEewLkC&dq=godel+escher+bach+eternal+golden+braid&pg=PP1&ots=FLMXfhfBwY&sig=A-zkU_v_89SVleKe63f6ipttMP0&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?q=Godel,+Escher,+Bach:+Eternal+Golden+Braid&sourceid=mozilla-
search&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-
thumbnail#PRA1-PA1,M1)

I had a buddy of mine in highschool who used to bring that book with him every
time we took LSD. Of course, he's now got his Ph.D. in physics from Purdue.

