Teaching computers how to differentiate or: Why Lisp? [English subtitles]

Differentiation of elementary functions is a purely mechanical process that can be performed by a "dumb" computer. This video shows how this can be done with a few lines of code and why the programming language Lisp is especially well-suited for such a task. You'll also learn a bit about homoiconicity and metaprogramming.
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00:00 Introduction
01:32 Numerical versus symbolic computation
03:22 Syntax, structure, and homoiconicity
08:21 A crash course in Lisp
16:06 Pattern matching
20:43 Search and replace
26:47 Differentiation as pattern matching
34:03 Cosmetics
39:15 Metaprogramming: macros