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Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

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Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#21

Post by igrekel »

Novash wrote: post #10
wglb wrote: post #6

Speaking of one who has four "distros" in the shop (ubuntu, freebsd, openbsd, osx) each of these has its strength and making our stuff work on them is not a big deal. I don't get confused at all, and there isn't all that much "noise". Similarly, for the very high performance stuff, i use SBCL which generates native code on all the above platforms. I recently have started to do CCL because a client wants a true mac ap…

It may not be for you, but it was for me in the beggining. I already went through 3 distros - Kurumin, Suse and Ubuntu, and the only reason I still have a Windows partition is to play some games that I couldn't (or didn't bother to) make work under Linux. I can tell you, the bar is very high to start. Ubuntu made it lower (and lower at each version) but it is still too high for mainstream. And it need not be. The who…

I don't really like this analogy because you can more easily shared piece of useful software across Linux distributions than you can across lisp implementations.

True that the differences are limited to things outside the specs, but somehow my applications almost always stepped in these parts.

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#23

Post by grosales »

I think you have a valid analogy of Lisp to Linux, but you you should finish the PG book before you make any final judgment. The power of Lisp comes from its "simplicity", its extensions, and the magical Aha moment you get while coding in Lisp (it's like obtaining zen only to realize new and bigger doors have opened before you and there is a vast ocean of new knowledge to gain) - the Aha moment is rather special, to the point that I don't know how to describe it, that's why you should try to have it yourself. Like other comments have mentioned, Scheme and CL have different purposes (Scheme is mostly used in academia and is very simplistic while CL was geared to enterprises mostly). I really don't know why Lisp flavor wars arise, I suppose is the price we pay for being among passionate people, it can hold back a technology for sure, but if that war can be turned into a logical debate of merits, great things can come out. On that note, I do like Windows 7 a lot, but I will stick to Linux because I have learned so much (shell scripting, network administration, socket programming) ever since I started using it that it's not even funny, and there is some fun in being able to fix something yourself instead of having to report a bug to MS and wait for them to fix it.

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#24

Post by rgoddard »

ilyak wrote: post #18

"If this is true and everything on the language are built atop of those, or atop of stuff built atop of those (in n-levels), how can different implementations possible be incompatible?" You cannot build i/o atop of axioms. It would always be a foreign thing that you have to deal with, incompatibly of using a long spec.

Details matter, and ultimately the code needs to run on a machine. Hence the implementation matters.

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#25

Post by Novash »

igrekel wrote: post #21
Novash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be for you, but it was for me in the beggining. I already went through 3 distros - Kurumin, Suse and Ubuntu, and the only reason I still have a Windows partition is to play some games that I couldn't (or didn't bother to) make work under Linux. I can tell you, the bar is very high to start. Ubuntu made it lower (and lower at each version) but it is still too high for mainstream. And it need not be. The who…

I don't really like this analogy because you can more easily shared piece of useful software across Linux distributions than you can across lisp implementations. True that the differences are limited to things outside the specs, but somehow my applications almost always stepped in these parts.

It is not a matter of software, but a matter of usability. Think of a Windows user only perspective. When installing a distro, you are confronted with the choice between X, KDE, Gnome, Compix, or whatever else Windows Manager is out there now, just to SHOW the Desktop. You haven't even started to use the OS and you must already make decisions about what to Window Manager to use. Most people don't even know what a Window Manager is. Now Google about them and all you will find are people that love their choice and diss all others and all of them seem wonderful in their eyes.

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#26

Post by J_McQuade »

Novash wrote: post #14
blue1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. choose your lisp dialect: do you want to learn CL, Scheme, Arc, ...? 2. randomly pick an implementation of your chosen lisp. It really makes no difference as a beginner. I speak from experience. You can always switch later in a painless way. regarding CL, choose an open source implementation if you don't fear things like emacs. If you prefer a more polished IDE, choose a commercial implementation.

CL on Lispbox is what I have now. Which means I use (use being a overstatement) e-Macs with a Lisp extension.

'emacs', please!

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#27

Post by babo »

Novash wrote: post #16
swannodette wrote: post #15

You should also look into Clojure, especially if you're interested in getting into concurrency and functional programming. I recommend using Enclojure+Netbeans for a user friendly introduction to a very powerful new Lisp.

Java is not really my field. However, I have half a mind to learn F#.

Java and JVM are different beasts, the later is a solid foundation for clojure. I'm not a Java guy at all, never used or learned it but still using clojure with great success and fun.

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#28

Post by Novash »

wglb wrote: post #6

Speaking of one who has four "distros" in the shop (ubuntu, freebsd, openbsd, osx) each of these has its strength and making our stuff work on them is not a big deal. I don't get confused at all, and there isn't all that much "noise". Similarly, for the very high performance stuff, i use SBCL which generates native code on all the above platforms. I recently have started to do CCL because a client wants a true mac ap…

I am gonna dive in. You can be sure of that. But I disagree with you when you say that there isn't all that much noise.

The are currently hundreds of distros. All of them serve a purpose. There are ones meant for servers, meant for gaming, meant for low-level machines, meant for coding, ones that work only with strict F.O.S.S software, ones that work with software that is commercial, ones that are paid, that offer support, that don't offer support, but there is a community willing to help, others that let you on your own. There are even ones that mimic Windows XP. And NONE that are user-friendly.

Kurumin is a brazilian distro that gets CLOSE to it, but it is quite lacking. Ubuntu is the nearest possible choice, but it is still not there.

Obviously, once you pick your distro, you have to pick your window manager. Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu? Or maybe there is only one window manager for your distro, but then that nice application you saw on your friend's house belongs to other and is not supported on yours. And how were you suposed to know?

Once you get past the initial trauma, you will eventually reach the point on when you can make your stuff work on any of them, but do you really expect someone that used Windows all his life and can barely install his printer whose drivers are already bult-in on Windows to really make this jump?

And don't even get me started on the different shells. Everyone likes to pretend that there is only Bash out there, but some distros still swear by the original Bourne. Or even CShell.

So, yes, there is a lot of noise.

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#29

Post by lispm »

rikthevik wrote: post #19

When you write C, you can be reasonably sure it will compile with a decent C compiler. There is no way to write 'Lisp'. Each Lisp dialect has different goals. A person might as well think of them as completely different languages belonging to the Lisp family. It might be analogous to think of Perl, Python and Ruby as being high-level dynamically typed interpreted languages as being part of the same family, but having…

C, C#, C++, Objective C, C with extensions, ...

Re: Ask HN: About all this Lisp fuzz

#30

Post by wglb »

Novash wrote: post #28
wglb wrote: post #6

Speaking of one who has four "distros" in the shop (ubuntu, freebsd, openbsd, osx) each of these has its strength and making our stuff work on them is not a big deal. I don't get confused at all, and there isn't all that much "noise". Similarly, for the very high performance stuff, i use SBCL which generates native code on all the above platforms. I recently have started to do CCL because a client wants a true mac ap…

I am gonna dive in. You can be sure of that. But I disagree with you when you say that there isn't all that much noise. The are currently hundreds of distros. All of them serve a purpose. There are ones meant for servers, meant for gaming, meant for low-level machines, meant for coding, ones that work only with strict F.O.S.S software, ones that work with software that is commercial, ones that are paid, that offer su…

Ok, so there is a lot of noise.

I picked ubuntu ignoring the noise because it has a nice package system does everything I want, upgrades nicely. No trauma, I ignore the noise. It has the shell I want, and i can trivially change to another shell should I so desire.

So I stand corrected--there is a lot of noise. But I suggest not letting it bother you. Pick one, say ubuntu and go.

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