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Alan Kay on Lisp

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Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#61

Post by kobeya »

JepZ wrote: post #53

Actually, I am missing the simplicity of Lisp and Smalltalk in todays languages. From what I remember, they both have a fairly simple but universal syntax, which can be written for Lisp as ([operator] [argument1] [argument2] [argumentN]) and for Smalltalk as [object] [message] So far I haven't seen anything like that for languages with the C-like syntax. Don't get me wrong. For example I love Go, but sometimes I miss…

It's out of favor now, but Objective-C? IIRC it was inspired by Smalltalk's message syntax.

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#62

Post by kobeya »

ohazi wrote: post #29

There seem to be two big camps that preach a "learn this weird new programming paradigm because it'll help you see things from a new perspective and will make you a better engineer" message: the lispy languages, and the ML-like languages. Both of these languages categories give you functional programming as well as metaprogramming, which is great. Having tried both, I've found that the ML-derived languages tend to ha…

I've long desired a strongly-typed s-expression syntax that has the power of Haskell or Idris, but still looks and feels like the blank canvas that is Lisp.

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#63

Post by kobeya »

pmoriarty wrote: post #25
Frondo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and well said. I'm very much a pragmatic kind of person, and my unpopular opinion about code is that Lisp is the greatest single language ever designed, if your goal in designing a language is to produce articles proclaiming it as such. And I am sooo sympathetic to the promises Lispers make. I want to believe. But ultimately, show me the code. Why are the stellar Lisp success stories so few and far between th…

Lisp's popularity came too early. Lisp really needed some relatively powerful machines to take advantage of it, and when it was actually popular most machines were way too weak for it. Now that machines are finally powerful enough to handle it, it's no longer popular, and it has no army of programmers using it as they are using some of the more popular languages like Java or Javascript. So, yeah, you're unlikely to s…

Well, Clojure seems popular.

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#65

Post by soapdog »

kobeya wrote: post #61
JepZ wrote: post #53

Actually, I am missing the simplicity of Lisp and Smalltalk in todays languages. From what I remember, they both have a fairly simple but universal syntax, which can be written for Lisp as ([operator] [argument1] [argument2] [argumentN]) and for Smalltalk as [object] [message] So far I haven't seen anything like that for languages with the C-like syntax. Don't get me wrong. For example I love Go, but sometimes I miss…

It's out of favor now, but Objective-C? IIRC it was inspired by Smalltalk's message syntax.

That was the feature I liked the most from my Objective-C days in the early versions of Mac OS X, it felt a bit like SmallTalk even if it was just named parameters and messages.

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#66

Post by scroot »

tonyg wrote: post #60
xenophonf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And these operating systems in both Smalltalk and Lisp were both better and easier to write than the standard ones of today. Look, I love Lisp as much as the next hacker, but is Alan Kay for real? Where's the Lisp equivalent to this C code? https://github.com/dwelch67/raspberrypi/tree/master/blinker0... More importantly, where's the accompanying toolchain? Seriously, I really want to know because I'd love, Love, LOVE…

For example, https://github.com/tonyg/pi-nothing/blob/master/kernel.nothi... does something similar to that blinker. It might not be quite what you're after, because it's only superficially a lisp; more an S-expression veneer over something C-like. Toolchain is the rest of the repo. Currently written in Racket. (BTW this is feasibility-study-level stuff, not production stuff. It's messy as hell because I haven't done…

The way things stand now, the only required piece of application software that a new personal computer needs in order to be viable is a web browser. But once you have that, and the system of your machine is sufficiently compelling, it would work for a great many people.

This is why I think someone is going to build something like an actual top to bottom Lisp/Smalltalk/Whatever machine sooner than we think.

If Smalltalk machines existed, I would buy one today.

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#67

Post by platz »

kobeya wrote: post #62
ohazi wrote: post #29

There seem to be two big camps that preach a "learn this weird new programming paradigm because it'll help you see things from a new perspective and will make you a better engineer" message: the lispy languages, and the ML-like languages. Both of these languages categories give you functional programming as well as metaprogramming, which is great. Having tried both, I've found that the ML-derived languages tend to ha…

I've long desired a strongly-typed s-expression syntax that has the power of Haskell or Idris, but still looks and feels like the blank canvas that is Lisp.

https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett

https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2017/05/27/realizing-hack...

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#68

Post by pmoriarty »

agumonkey wrote: post #56
JepZ wrote: post #53

Actually, I am missing the simplicity of Lisp and Smalltalk in todays languages. From what I remember, they both have a fairly simple but universal syntax, which can be written for Lisp as ([operator] [argument1] [argument2] [argumentN]) and for Smalltalk as [object] [message] So far I haven't seen anything like that for languages with the C-like syntax. Don't get me wrong. For example I love Go, but sometimes I miss…

smalltalk cutest feature is the named parameter syntax trick (I don't like tricks but let's make an exception). make-range from: 10 to: 20 calss (make-range.from:to 10 20) or something similar. Free nanodsls smalltalk simplicity lies in that the metamodel is actually human reasoning friendly, even while dynamic, you have a clear picture of what's gonna happen in case of errors etc. It didn't please visual age users,…

"smalltalk cutest feature is the named parameter syntax trick..."

  make-range from: 10 to: 20 calss (make-range.from:to 10 20) or something similar. Free nanodsls
For the uninitiated among us, what does that do and what's so magic about it?

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#69

Post by nabla9 »

DigitalJack wrote: post #50
jackmott wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever Alan Kay thinks OOP is, it isn't what we think it is.

just fyi, Alan Kay coined the phrase Object Oriented Programming. So your statement, while true, should probably say what we call object oreinted programming should have a different name.

If you want to do OO Alan Kay style, you need late binding, metaobject protocol, and messages. The difference between dot.setX(10) and dot.moveToHorizontalPos(10) may seem irrelevant, but the other messing with internal state, other asking object to do something.

Bastard-OO is widely successful in everyday programming because classes enforce modules + mandatory interface definitions. They restrain spaghetti code inside smaller entities that are easily managed. Software architect can define these entities and give them to code monkeys to fill. Static compilation can do rudimentary validation. It's not small feat and enables some scaling, but it's dirty and not really OO.

Re: Alan Kay on Lisp

#70

Post by pmoriarty »

ohazi wrote: post #29

There seem to be two big camps that preach a "learn this weird new programming paradigm because it'll help you see things from a new perspective and will make you a better engineer" message: the lispy languages, and the ML-like languages. Both of these languages categories give you functional programming as well as metaprogramming, which is great. Having tried both, I've found that the ML-derived languages tend to ha…

"Having tried both, I've found that the ML-derived languages tend to have a stronger type system that's more rigorously enforced at compile time. I personally find this much more valuable in practice than some of the dynamic magic that you can do with lisp."

You probably meant to contrast ML's static typing (not strong typing) with Lisps's dynamic typing. See "What To Know Before Debating Type Systems":

https://cdsmith.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/an-old-article-i-wr...

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