Lisp and the foundations of computing

Posted Feb 11, 2019 14:41 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
In reply to: Lisp and the foundations of computing by marcH
Parent article: Lisp and the foundations of computing

> Science is about all the wild things that are possible given infinite time, knowledge and resources.
> ...
> Engineering is about the practical things that people actually do and use given real-world time, knowledge and resources.

Maybe this is an engineer's view of science, but it's certainly not a very scientific view of either. In my humble oppinion, Science is about which things are possible and which are not, and *why*. Engineering is about *how* to make those things (or something close enough) at a reasonable cost.

Lisp and the foundations of computing

Posted Feb 11, 2019 21:26 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Quite. Science can also sometimes tell you that the answer is "never, or at least not unless you fundamentally rethink it". That knowledge of limitations *alone* justifies all this maundering, even if nothing else useful came out of it. :)