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Not Lisp again (2009)

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Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#11

Post by TheApexTheater »

pmoriarty wrote: post #6

The objections the author had way back in the day are no longer the objections programmers of mainstream languages have to Lisp today. Today the objections I hear are more along the lines of: 1 - All those parenthesis. (Still a top objection) 2 - Lisp doesn't look like or work like what I'm used to. 3 - Lisp doesn't have as many libraries as the most popular mainstream programming languages. 4 - There aren't nearly a…

As a response to your objections,

1) It's just a syntax thing... It's still possible to make an understandable program through good style

2) I don't have anything.

3-6) I've heard Racket is a good spiritual successor to Lisp, complete with external libraries and a broad(er) userbase.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#12

Post by phailhaus »

I'm having trouble understanding why the derivative example was so impressive to the author. Can someone explain? It seems trivial to do in any language where functions are first class citizens.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#13

Post by marcosdumay »

pmoriarty wrote: post #6

The objections the author had way back in the day are no longer the objections programmers of mainstream languages have to Lisp today. Today the objections I hear are more along the lines of: 1 - All those parenthesis. (Still a top objection) 2 - Lisp doesn't look like or work like what I'm used to. 3 - Lisp doesn't have as many libraries as the most popular mainstream programming languages. 4 - There aren't nearly a…

To be fair, the one time I decided to do something biggish and kinda important in Lisp, I stopped at #3. Not exactly because "it does not have many libraries", but because "library for X, Y and Z are not there and I don't want to write them".

Oddly, Haskell has a similar problem, but going through C code by the FFI does not feel like a problem. I don't think why it does in Lisp, it may be just a matter of better documentation.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#14

Post by c3534l »

Yeah, but it's goddamned ugly and unreadable. It considers repetition to be a design feature. If you're going to sell people on the benefits of functional programming, I think you should really be pushing more for SML or Haskell or something like that.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#15

Post by vilhelm_s »

phailhaus wrote: post #12

I'm having trouble understanding why the derivative example was so impressive to the author. Can someone explain? It seems trivial to do in any language where functions are first class citizens.

Lisp was the first language he encountered with first-class functions, and derivatives is an example showing why first-class functions are useful.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#16

Post by [deleted] »

c3534l wrote: post #14

Yeah, but it's goddamned ugly and unreadable. It considers repetition to be a design feature . If you're going to sell people on the benefits of functional programming, I think you should really be pushing more for SML or Haskell or something like that.

[deleted]

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#17

Post by emsy »

pmoriarty wrote: post #6

The objections the author had way back in the day are no longer the objections programmers of mainstream languages have to Lisp today. Today the objections I hear are more along the lines of: 1 - All those parenthesis. (Still a top objection) 2 - Lisp doesn't look like or work like what I'm used to. 3 - Lisp doesn't have as many libraries as the most popular mainstream programming languages. 4 - There aren't nearly a…

For me it's not the paranthesis, but that Lisp posts always show low level code. At least half of my programming is tying together high level services and libraries. I know how I can express those concepts succinctly in Java, C++, JS, Swift etc. I'd love to see some examples of Lisp for something like a REST controller, where I call services, repositories etc.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#18

Post by jlongster »

phailhaus wrote: post #12

I'm having trouble understanding why the derivative example was so impressive to the author. Can someone explain? It seems trivial to do in any language where functions are first class citizens.

This was back in 1983 where most (all?) other languages did not have first-class procedures. If you can imagine programming without them and then being exposed to that, it would be a big deal. We take them for granted today.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#19

Post by siscia »

c3534l wrote: post #14

Yeah, but it's goddamned ugly and unreadable. It considers repetition to be a design feature . If you're going to sell people on the benefits of functional programming, I think you should really be pushing more for SML or Haskell or something like that.

Repetition of what? I don't see any repetition on those snippets... What are you referring to?

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#20

Post by golergka »

c3534l wrote: post #14

Yeah, but it's goddamned ugly and unreadable. It considers repetition to be a design feature . If you're going to sell people on the benefits of functional programming, I think you should really be pushing more for SML or Haskell or something like that.

Unreadable? Personally, I think that Lisp has the clearest possible syntax - because it basically doesn't have any. It's just straight ASTs - something that I have to visualize myself in other languages wich have more syntax sugar.
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