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Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

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Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#31

Post by xstartup »

goatlover wrote: post #14
ShaneWilton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisp teaches you that there's always a better tool for the job than something that's already in your toolkit. More than any other language I've worked with, Lisp makes it incredibly easy and low-friction to write domain-specific languages to solve the exact problem you're working with. That's not always a good thing -- it can make working with a foreign codebase difficult -- but it's definitely a powerful concept whe…

Lisp seems to take the exact opposite approach as Go. The power of languages like Lisp appeal to me, so I have a hard time understanding why people want a language that intentionally limits itself. Read Graham's book and he's talking about how macros are great for writing maintainable code because you can make it both short and very readable because it's close to the domain. But then you hear the arguments in favor o…

The complex features, lots of syntax and many ways to do things are not a problem for experienced devs in a particular language. The real trouble comes when these experienced folks leave the project for something more challenging and you start with newbie devs with no experience and they feel demotivated when they come across these tricky features and abstractions which requires months of conditioning. At that point, all you want to do is make a meaningful contribution in the reasonable amount of time increasing your motivation level. The beginning is the hardest part.

Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#33

Post by taeric »

ShaneWilton wrote: post #11
macintux wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning a functional language has been eye-opening, but I've always struggled with Lisp. It was Erlang that finally clicked with me. I would suggest, if you haven't already learned one, to find some FP language that looks interesting. Elm, perhaps, or Elixir. I'm not a fan of "hybrid" languages like Scala; finding one that hews closely to the FP ideas will be more useful, I think, in learning how to think functional…

While I agree with you, it's important to note that the defining trait of Lisp isn't that it's a functional language. It can be functional, just as it can be object oriented or procedural, but those labels matter less to what Lisp is than does the intense focus on things like metaprogramming, in my opinion.

That is far from the defining trait of lisp. Probably brought about because it was easy to pass around functions in lisp. However, i find lisp is at its most powerful when you understand some of the imperative abstractions that are available to you.

Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#34

Post by dreamcompiler »

nafizh wrote: post #7

Every time, I see one of these links or videos, I feel the urge to learn Lisp. But after some time, I lose the motivation. I think that is because I don't know what benefit learning lisp will provide me concretely. Anyone has any suggestion?

Do you like Python? Python is basically simplified Lisp. Common Lisp is Python plus first-class lexical closures (rather than second-class) plus true multithreading plus a real compiler so it runs much faster.

Plus parentheses rather than indentation to delimit expressions; parentheses are much more versatile once you get used to them.

Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#35

Post by reikonomusha »

tunesmith wrote: post #29
flavio81 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is one of the very few languages where the source code is made of a data structure that the language is very good at manipulating. Thus, writing code that generates code, be it at runtime or at compile-time, is downright easy in Lisp. This opens up enormous possibilities not found in other languages. Also, on regular programming languages, your code executes only at run time. In Lisp, or at least in Common Lisp (a…

The problem for me is that I've learned to avoid macros in other languages. It seems to me that when you've got a fairly complex program, you need a fairly complex mental model of what the program "is" to understand it. But if you introduce macros, or code writing code, then you have a much more complex mental model since now even what the code "is" can change. What is it about lisp that makes this an easier sell?

When the "atoms" of your language are causing whatever problem you're solving to be difficult to express, then it may be wise to introduce new "atoms" to make the idea easier to express.

The new atoms are supposed to communicate intent faster and more concisely, and decrease the burden of understanding what's going on. That's the role of an abstraction, especially syntactic abstractions.

Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#37

Post by reikonomusha »

xstartup wrote: post #30
patkai wrote: post #23

Code as data is such a big deal that - whatever you say - I will never ever understand why we don't all do Lisps.

What's the most popular Lisp in use today? Does it come with a static compile type checking?

One of the most popular Common Lisps is Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) [0], which has some degree of compile time type checking and compile time type inference.

[0] http://www.sbcl.org/

Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#38

Post by argv_empty »

goatlover wrote: post #14
ShaneWilton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisp teaches you that there's always a better tool for the job than something that's already in your toolkit. More than any other language I've worked with, Lisp makes it incredibly easy and low-friction to write domain-specific languages to solve the exact problem you're working with. That's not always a good thing -- it can make working with a foreign codebase difficult -- but it's definitely a powerful concept whe…

Lisp seems to take the exact opposite approach as Go. The power of languages like Lisp appeal to me, so I have a hard time understanding why people want a language that intentionally limits itself. Read Graham's book and he's talking about how macros are great for writing maintainable code because you can make it both short and very readable because it's close to the domain. But then you hear the arguments in favor o…

That surprises me, because languages like Lisp, Smalltalk, Ruby and Haskell are all about powerful abstraction capabilities so you can express yourself exactly as you need instead of writing a lot of boilerplate.

There is a mindset that's popular among programmers which says, "I cannot understand what anything does except by knowing all about its internals." Languages like Go let the programmer keep that mantra instead of understanding the things they use based on a description of external behavior.

Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#39

Post by reikonomusha »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #34
nafizh wrote: post #7

Every time, I see one of these links or videos, I feel the urge to learn Lisp. But after some time, I lose the motivation. I think that is because I don't know what benefit learning lisp will provide me concretely. Anyone has any suggestion?

Do you like Python? Python is basically simplified Lisp. Common Lisp is Python plus first-class lexical closures (rather than second-class) plus true multithreading plus a real compiler so it runs much faster. Plus parentheses rather than indentation to delimit expressions; parentheses are much more versatile once you get used to them.

Python and Common Lisp are pretty wildly different in almost every social, technological, and philosophical sense.

Re: Lisp at the Frontier of Computation [video]

#40

Post by gnufx »

goatlover wrote: post #14
ShaneWilton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisp teaches you that there's always a better tool for the job than something that's already in your toolkit. More than any other language I've worked with, Lisp makes it incredibly easy and low-friction to write domain-specific languages to solve the exact problem you're working with. That's not always a good thing -- it can make working with a foreign codebase difficult -- but it's definitely a powerful concept whe…

Lisp seems to take the exact opposite approach as Go. The power of languages like Lisp appeal to me, so I have a hard time understanding why people want a language that intentionally limits itself. Read Graham's book and he's talking about how macros are great for writing maintainable code because you can make it both short and very readable because it's close to the domain. But then you hear the arguments in favor o…

An old epi²gram:

There should be only one way to do it. — Python

There's more than one way to do it. — Perl

Do the right thing. — Lisp

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