Lobsters Interview

Summary

My Lobsters Interview By Susam Pal on 12 Sep 2025 I recently had an engaging conversation with Alex (@veqq) from the Lobsters community about computing, mathematics and a range of related topics. Our conversation was later published on the community website as Lobsters Interview with Susam. I should mention the sections presented in that post are not in the same order in which we originally discussed them. The sections were edited and rearranged by Alex to improve the flow and avoid repetition of similar topics too close to each other. This page preserves a copy of our discussion as edited by Alex, so I can keep an archived version on my website. In my copy, I have added a table of contents to make it easier to navigate to specific sections. The interview itself follows the table of contents. I hope you enjoy reading it. Contents Lisp and Other Things Lisp, Emacs and Mathematics Interests and Exploration Computing for Fun Computing Activities Programming vs Domains Old Functionality and New Problems Designing for Composability Small vs Large Functions Domains and Projects Double Spacing and Touch Typing Approach to Learning Managing Time and Distractions Blogging Forums MathB Moderation Problems Favourite Mathematics Textbooks Mathematics and Computing Our Conversation Hi @susam, I primarily know you as a Lisper, what other things do you use? Yes, I use Lisp extensively for my personal projects and much of what I do in my leisure is built on it. I ran a mathematics pastebin for close to thirteen years. It was quite popular on some IRC channels. The pastebin was written in Common Lisp. My personal website and blog are generated using a tiny static site generator written in Common Lisp. Over the years I have built several other personal tools in it as well. I am an active Emacs Lisp programmer too. Many of my software tools are in fact Emacs Lisp functions that I invoke with convenient key sequences. They help me automate repetitive tasks as well as improve my text ed...