Abstract Heresies

In my previous post , I gave the puzzle of taking a pattern and generating code that matches it. The tricky part was making sure that the p...

In my previous post , I gave a small pattern matching problem. It is easily solved by recursively descending the pattern and the object to ...

Here's a quick little puzzle that isn't too hard. A pattern is: A symbol, number, boolean, or null (an atom). A pattern variable...

Imagine that we have a boatload of memory and we're nowhere near the limit. Suppose, too, that we allocate memory simply by bumping the...

Theorem: The mean lifetime of a heap allocated object is equal to the mean amount of reachable storage. Proof: This is Little's Law...

We model the Lisp heap as a queuing system. A “queuing system” consists of discrete objects we shall call “items” that “arrive” at some ra...

In Chapter 5 of Building Intuition: Insights from Basic Operations Management Models and Principles , edited by D. Chhajed and T. J. Lowe, S...