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Lisp is still a secret weapon

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Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#51

Post by sheepmullet »

metaobject wrote: post #38
dkarapetyan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really a programmer. All my training is in abstract math so whenever I see people arguing over language X and Y it always seems weird to me. I don't write code until I've sketched things out with pencil and paper and by necessity I have to disentagle the syntax of the language from the essence of the problem. Turns out when I do things that way translating the solution back into a language X ends up being the…

But depending on the language you intend to use, you may approach the problem from a different angle. A Lisp solution may look very different from a Python or C solution.

The same is true in maths as well.

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#52

Post by bbcbasic »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #25

Here are some heretical thoughts. The language is irrelevant. The text editor is irrelevant. The OS is irrelevant. The size of your monitor is irrelevant. All your productivity hacks are irrelevant. The only relevant thing is your ability to formulate and solve problems. You might say the language can help with both the formulation and the solution but I'd say that just comes down to what language you're most comfort…

If your startup is dependent on solving chicken and egg marketing problems the choice of Lisp vs. something else is fairly irrelevant as you said. This is the case in most startups that take a traditional business (e.g. Taxi) and modernise it (e.g. uber). The level of tech required to do that is not going to be cutting edge. It is quite rote to solve these things in RoR or PHP.

On the other hand there may be some startups where the choice of language really matters. One thing I can think of is how a lot of Enterprise software is a big feature fest with massive complicatedness coming from a mixture of the real-world muckiness of the problem, and poor architectural choices. Such shops require armies of programmers to maintain their bloated wares. Maybe a startup with a much more thoughtful approach, using a Lisp/Haskell/etc. type language and a small number of developers can have a big competitive advantage.

Customer "we need a new feature". Startup "sure we'll add a rule and you'll have that tomorrow". Old business "that will take 3 months and cost $1m"

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#53

Post by wmil »

jtwebman wrote: post #19

He didn't sell me on why Lisp is better than any other language? Why would you pick Lisp or Clojure over say Elixir, Scala, or even F#? JT

I've seen some impressive integration between Clojure and Emacs.

A quick edit - run cycle is a huge win. As are good debugging tools.

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#54

Post by dkarapetyan »

tangled wrote: post #46
dkarapetyan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really a programmer. All my training is in abstract math so whenever I see people arguing over language X and Y it always seems weird to me. I don't write code until I've sketched things out with pencil and paper and by necessity I have to disentagle the syntax of the language from the essence of the problem. Turns out when I do things that way translating the solution back into a language X ends up being the…

This is approach is great for greenfield development, but when it comes to software maintenance I find myself having to think in terms of the target language so that I can formulate the right long-term solution for the codebase in question.

Yes, this is true. For maintenance projects I've noticed that before I can sketch things out I have to translate the existing codebase into the proper abstract domain but in my experience this is just an extra step and does not negate the general approach of thinking in a domain that is completely free of programming language related issues.

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#55

Post by dkarapetyan »

bbcbasic wrote: post #52
dkarapetyan wrote: post #25

Here are some heretical thoughts. The language is irrelevant. The text editor is irrelevant. The OS is irrelevant. The size of your monitor is irrelevant. All your productivity hacks are irrelevant. The only relevant thing is your ability to formulate and solve problems. You might say the language can help with both the formulation and the solution but I'd say that just comes down to what language you're most comfort…

If your startup is dependent on solving chicken and egg marketing problems the choice of Lisp vs. something else is fairly irrelevant as you said. This is the case in most startups that take a traditional business (e.g. Taxi) and modernise it (e.g. uber). The level of tech required to do that is not going to be cutting edge. It is quite rote to solve these things in RoR or PHP. On the other hand there may be some sta…

I think you're making the case for language irrelevance even more. The reason big corp. can't move fast isn't because of their technology choices. It is because of all the bloatware and bureaucracy. You can be bureaucratic and bloated in any language.

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#56

Post by backlava »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #55
bbcbasic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your startup is dependent on solving chicken and egg marketing problems the choice of Lisp vs. something else is fairly irrelevant as you said. This is the case in most startups that take a traditional business (e.g. Taxi) and modernise it (e.g. uber). The level of tech required to do that is not going to be cutting edge. It is quite rote to solve these things in RoR or PHP. On the other hand there may be some sta…

I think you're making the case for language irrelevance even more. The reason big corp. can't move fast isn't because of their technology choices. It is because of all the bloatware and bureaucracy. You can be bureaucratic and bloated in any language.

But in some languages bloat is a best practice.

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#57

Post by pakled_engineer »

worldsayshi wrote: post #3

But we need types people! Properly static ones that can be used to encode your intentions and handle inconsistency before even running the program. And yes I know that Clojure has an optional type system. But optional means that you cannot rely on having types in the libraries that you use. So you can't fit your stuff together with their stuff and have reasonable expectations that it will work once the user does that…

Typed Racket working for me lately https://www.classes.cs.uchicago.edu/archive/2014/fall/15100-...

But again no massive ecosystem of libraries to simply plug in so unsure if 'secret weapon'. Also I have experienced the nightmare of trying to port non typed libraries to typed Clojure and falling into a rabbit hole of errors propagating. Haven't had the same problem with Racket but ecosystem is not even close to Clojure so anecdotes worthless.

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#58

Post by [deleted] »

snake117 wrote: post #22

This was a great read. I've always heard about Clojure and now I have a better idea as to what it is. I'm still going to stick with what I've heard all along: it doesn't matter what language you write in, it matters how you write it.

[deleted]

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#59

Post by sheepmullet »

jtwebman wrote: post #19

He didn't sell me on why Lisp is better than any other language? Why would you pick Lisp or Clojure over say Elixir, Scala, or even F#? JT

> Why would you pick Lisp or Clojure over say Elixir, Scala, or even F#?

They are all great choices!

F# is an excellent choice if you are happy living within the .net ecosystem. I'd highly recommend it if you are a c# dev. Tooling is great. Ecosystem is really good etc. Performance is really good.

Elixir? Its a really good option for high concurrency apps. It's based upon Erlang and has access to heavily battle tested libraries. Tooling and ecosystem not as good for many kinds of applications as the jvm/clr.

Scala? Another good option somewhat limited by its complexity. I personally prefer F# and I think it has better tooling. Nevertheless it's a great option for the jvm crowd.

Why did I choose clojure? Mainly for its good defaults, a community focused on simplicity, data, and composability, a great jvm AND JavaScript story, macros, amazing tooling, and ease of learning.

Re: Lisp is still a secret weapon

#60

Post by discreteevent »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #25

Here are some heretical thoughts. The language is irrelevant. The text editor is irrelevant. The OS is irrelevant. The size of your monitor is irrelevant. All your productivity hacks are irrelevant. The only relevant thing is your ability to formulate and solve problems. You might say the language can help with both the formulation and the solution but I'd say that just comes down to what language you're most comfort…

" I think Lisp still has an edge for larger projects and for applications where the speed of the compiled code is important. But Python has the edge (with a large number of students) when the main goal is communication, not programming per se. In terms of programming-in-the-large, at Google and elsewhere, I think that language choice is not as important as all the other choices: if you have the right overall architecture, the right team of programmers, the right development process that allows for rapid development with continuous improvement, then many languages will work for you; if you don't have those things you're in trouble regardless of your language choice."

- Peter Norvig

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815

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