BloodyShrimp comments on Prisoner's dilemma tournament results - Less Wrong

32 Post author: AlexMennen 09 July 2013 08:50PM

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Comment author: BloodyShrimp 11 July 2013 08:29:47PM 2 points [-]

Most of these suggestions are okay, but don't move away from Lisp. A very restricted Scheme (e.g. one way to set variables, one looping construct (I really like foldl, as N shows), etc.) would be good; the lexical scoping and general immutability make it one of the best Lisps for our purposes.

Comment author: solipsist 11 July 2013 10:23:14PM *  0 points [-]

+1 for restricted Scheme. I suggest restricted Python because it is more accessible and would allow more people to participate, but personally I like Scheme a bit more.

On the other hand, many many people were turned off by Scheme last time, and few of them will be reading this post. I'd like to give them a shot, if only to get a more diverse crowd.

On looping constructs: Would that buy us anything? What if people use recursion for looping? Should we restrict recursion?

Question for the audience: would there be a benefit to using a programming language that allows only primitive recursive functions?

Comment author: skepsci 12 July 2013 03:51:24AM *  2 points [-]

I think a programming language that only allows primitive recursion is a bad idea. One common pattern (which I think we want to allow) was for bots to simulate their opponents, which entails the ability to simulate arbitrary valid code. This would not be possible in a language which restricts to primitive recursion.