2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2016–2022score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Held up in Lisp threads as a striking example of Lisp powering cutting-edge science.
Christian Schafmeister's Google Tech Talk on Clasp and CANDO, a Common Lisp implementation on LLVM and C++ used to design molecules, including energy minimization and force-field calculations.
“I challenge anyone to watch this lecture from Christian Schafmeister and say they are not impressed” (HN, 2016)
Lisp is programmable programming language, especially Common Lisp. It works as programmer amplifier. Better you are, more you benefit from it. I challenge anyone to watch this lecture from Christian Schafmeister and say they are not impressed: [link] and [this video]
Impressive lecture on Lisp for designing molecules.
Your Google talk was one of my top 10 ever, it blew me away. It's not uncommon in the tech industry to build some mad scientist solution - pardon the expression - because we're trying to do something pedestrian but have painted ourselves in to a corner, eg HipHop VM. Doing it to help with cutting edge science is genuinely exciting. [this video]
Yesterday I was on the European Lisp Symposium, listening to the talk about Clasp and CANDO. Christian Schafmeister, who is a chemist , basically wrote his own Common Lisp implementation with focus on speed and C++ interop to have a base to run a molecule design tool on - because no available software was up to the task he's doing (designing stuff like water filters out of molecules)[0]. What it made me realize is that... I need to find myself something else to do than programming. Something else to learn about in greater detail. There are many, many interesting problems out there to solve, but you have to know about them first. Programming is great as a support speciality, if you have another one to support it. Right now the only thing I'm specialized in is making better tools for developers. Which we're in need of, true, but even more so are other domains. [0] - Yesterday's talk should be up soon; in the meantime, here's his talk from last year at Google: [this video] .
Chemist's talk on writing Clasp for molecule design.
"How the strengths of Lisp-family languages facilitate building complex and flexible bioinformatics applications." [link] -- US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health "Clasp: Common Lisp using LLVM and C++ for Designing Molecules" [this video] -- GoogleTechTalks
Ah, related to #clasp: [link] Clasp: Common Lisp using LLVM and C++ for Molecular Metaprogramming [link] 2018 LLVM Developers Meeting: C. Schafmeister lessons Learned Implementing Common Lisp with LLVM [this video] Clasp: Common Lisp using LLVM and C++ for Designing Molecules [link] Modular Polymer Catalysts - Chris Schafmeister [link] 10S6P4 Christian Schafmeister 2010 UNTT 3rd Annual Conference Session 6 Presentation 4
More presentations! I think two are almost the same presentation: [link] (July 2010) 10S6P4 Christian Schafmeister 2010 UNTT 3rd Annual Conference Session 6 Presentation 4 [link] (July 2015) Clasp: Common Lisp using LLVM and C++ for Molecular Metaprogramming [this video] (Aug 2015) Clasp: Common Lisp using LLVM and C++ for Designing Molecules [link] (Oct 2018) Modular Polymer Catalysts - Chris Schafmeister [link] (Nov 2018) LLVM Developers Meeting: C. Schafmeister lessons Learned Implementing Common Lisp with LLVM
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
6 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes
Read more