Tools for Programming Language Design

Starting from scratch. Looking around the "tools for building new languages" ecosystem to see what peopel use. Encountered Racket. Noted Airflow for visualising workflows. Will work towards a sort of env where I can see in one shot (for any new lang) :

• { universe :
• [ runtime structure ] <> [  LL compilation targets ] <> 
• [ "mylang" structure ] <> [ IR structure ] <>
• [ parsers + lexers  ] <> [ syntax structure ]
• }... to form a map of economics/tradeoffs for the universe. 

Then I can get some sense of how existing languages fit in, before I try to think of new language decisions. But if the map/tool is robust, it should form some sort of fabric that allows automated testing of hypotheses about ( consequences of syntax decisions, at runtime, at scale ).

Lisp Study

 What I learnt about Lisp this week.

• 1. Common Lisp is trash. The name should have given it away. Sigh. I always give away the benefit of doubts - such a social creature, I am.
• 2. Scheme is more elegant, hewing closer to the point of McCarthyan publications : that only few axiomatic idioms are sufficient to generate nearly all others.
• 3. Clojure is cool trash. Since it runs on JVM, and was developed more recently, the syntax and ecosystem are nice for getting things done.

Many thanks to the author of : Make a Lisp : for giving me something to get started with, in this study. I did not bother to finish the assignment - as it is full of practical chores which do not aid my understanding of the axioms.

MAL tutorial : https://github.com/kanaka/mal/

Author : https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-martin-519920/

ASEAN should take GRAB private

• - regional infrastructure fund : composed of multiple SWFs
• - valuation is now more transparent post-IPO
• - the playbook for UBER-style has ALWAYS been "exit to gov", because the business model began with "fix the gov"

I said it, and I'm not sorry.

Two Pillars of Human Cognition

 In science :

• The first thing to understand, is hypothesis testing.
• The second, is the limits to the quantification of human experience.

1. The general concept of hypothesis testing is easy to explain to a child. I learnt of it formally when I was 8, but all higher animals have an intuition for it, as it undergirds the post-infant capability to execute risk management.

2. The general concept of transcendental "idealism / aesthetics" is slightly harder. I learnt of it formally when I was 14, but most conversational animals have an intuition for it, as it is simply a reflection on consciousness prior to the activity of verbalisation. Its study may involve a systematic review of the process of verbal communication, which encodes pre-verbal information, in very abstract (lossy) signals.

All of this is tremendously exciting to think about, because we now live in a world which spends TONS of money on building machines which are failing to execute these very pillars of cognition, while performing all sorts of baroque operations which are non-fundamental to the process of organic human thought.

Ethnography of the 'Foreigner' in Malaysia

• Usage A : Living in Malaysia as a non-Malay Malaysian, I used to have a concept of 'foreigner' synonymous with 'non-Malaysian'.
• Usage B : After much study of my Malay Malaysian peers, I found that ( neither condoned nor contravened by law ), many of them consider non-Malays to be 'foreigners', and so this usage is distinct from B.

In some other countries, this species of culture is structurally different : for example, in the US, there have been so many generations of conflict between classes and citizens. So, while many naive white citizens consider coloured citizens to be foreigners, it is broadly considered impolite to associate patriotism with whiteness - although the present White House Administration might have one thinking otherwise. Indigenous people have little to no special status in the US constitution. And so the subculture of white citizenship as central arises because ... white people wrote the constitution. This has been, both dandily and uncouthly fought out over the entire history of that nation.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, while the law supports no concept of 'foreigner citizen', the law highlights 'Malay + other indigenous' citizenship as distinct legal qualities. And so, it is the positivism of indigeneity which leads to the fairly common notion that non-'Malay + other indigenous' citizens are foreigners. *

So by common convention, my status in Malaysia is 'foreigner citizen'. Ergo am a 'foreigner' in my own country of birth and residency. And that will probably be the case until I die.

My Chinese heritage, in brief : not much

 For a chunk of the CE 2nd millennia, China's org-chart had four layers :

• - 士 governors / upper
• - 农 farmers / cyclical
• - 工 artisans / lower 
• - 商 traders / lower

During the most egalitarian periods, class transition was facilitated by exams. Exams! Grades! But with immediate, formal, class ascension : so "academia" was important among parts of this culture.

Value systems mutated over the centuries, around economic cycles, and geopolitical events : some periods were more egalitarian, others were more oligarchic. In the 21st century, where are these, on the global scale, beyond Chinese society?

• - 商 traders / global trade development has brought most emphasis on this class of the world's citizens; esteem is reserved for the lowly masses, but respected in their approach to ascension.
• - 士 governors / law makers are subservient in many parts of the world, but it is a political age, and so they hog the limelight, without true accompanying power.
• - 工 artisans / technologists have grown in esteem as turn of the 20th/21st century has seen a small renaissance of software. (Broadly, all manufacturing entrepreneurs would fall into this category.)
• - 农 farmers / again, the global trade environment has stratified these into the haves and have-nots. On one hand, no one wants to be a servant farmer ( orange picker ), on the other, everyone wants to homestead ( do the farmergram ).

I'm ethnically Chinese, though I've never been there. Most of my life has been lived in Malaysia, just down the coast, where my fathers's family moved when he was a child. My mother's family has been here for a few generations.

My father's culture comes from a family of the 士. My mother's from a family of the 商. Most Chinese Malaysians, as diaspora were of the latter variety. My father's type results from the wars of the early 20th century.

As an anthropologist, I've made a point to circle through as many types of cultures as I can get access to. Most of the last 20 years has been focused on supplementing my orientation as 士, with knowledge about the 商, and along the way I have developed some capital as a 工.