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Common Lisp homepage

lisp-lang.org

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Re: Common Lisp homepage

#111

Post by kqr »

pure-awesome wrote: post #4

What exactly is meant by the line "Design patterns disappear as you adapt the language to your problem domain." The word "disappear" is a hyperlink to a pdf, which refers to domain-specific design-patterns. I don't quite seem to grasp what is being implied on the home-page. Is it something like Lisp is very customizable and allows you to easily overload operators? (I am primarily a Java programmer and have never used…

If it is indeed true that you are primarily a Java dev who has never used Lisp, I am impressed by how well you managed to ask a question in an area where you must have very little familiarity.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#112

Post by AnimalMuppet »

vesak wrote: post #103
kamaal wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them have faded. Cobol? Seriously, there are probably more Cobol programmers than there are Python programmers. And C? Most of the world runs on C, and its irreplaceable language in a non desktop computer. And you will be surprised how much Perl code is written everyday. The root comment is talking about the fad of the year, the kind of a language web devs use as flavor of the year. The current ones are Javas…

Yeah, when I wrote the comment, I kinda guessed that people would point out the zombie-like state of living for these languages. That's only barely being alive, though, and very much faded. (I did have C in there but edited it out. I don't think that's a dead language yet.)

But isn't Lisp almost as zombie-like as Perl or COBOL? (4GL I'll probably give you...)

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#114

Post by SomeHacker44 »

JaumeGreen wrote: post #8
pure-awesome wrote: post #4

What exactly is meant by the line "Design patterns disappear as you adapt the language to your problem domain." The word "disappear" is a hyperlink to a pdf, which refers to domain-specific design-patterns. I don't quite seem to grasp what is being implied on the home-page. Is it something like Lisp is very customizable and allows you to easily overload operators? (I am primarily a Java programmer and have never used…

Lisp macros are what make lisp extensible. They make it extensible in a way that make it indistinguishable from language features. The best simple explanatin I found for macros is this one [0]. In a rough sumary: you could add to lisp any "missing" functionality -present in another language- with just macros (without altering the compiler/interpreter), and this functionality would work as if it was in the compiler/in…

Remember that Common Lisp, at least, has many different types of macros. The most common are ordinary s-expression macros (macros that look like s-expressions and output an s-expression at compile time).

However, there are also symbol macros and reader macros as well, each of which are used to make Common Lisp massively extensible and an amazingly expressive language.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#115

Post by nerpderp83 »

This is not good, the info density for the screen area is too low. This could have been one maybe two screens worth. Is this the credits to Friends? Am I consuming Lisp Content while chillin in my penthouse on my 20k couch using a gold plated IPad X Tablet?

Millennials are Killing Common Lisp.

one page, https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#116

Post by AnimalMuppet »

susam wrote: post #7

Lisp is quite popular at my current workplace. A few popular open source projects published by our organization have been written in Clojure (a dialect of Lisp that runs on JVM and CLR). A few domain specific languages used internally in our organization are also inspired by Lisp. On a more personal front, I find Lisp to be simple, elegant, and expressive. I use Common Lisp (SBCL) for personal use. Working with Lisp…

> I sometimes wonder why Lisp has not been more popular in the technology industry.

Larry Wall said that a language should make the easy things easy, and the hard things possible. I think the problem is that Lisp doesn't make the easy things easy.

Before you tar and feather me, hear me out. There are two different ways in which Lisp doesn't make the easy things easy.

First, syntax. "But it's easy! In fact, it's the easiest!" you reply. But for the vast majority of programmers, Lisp syntax is not easy. You could argue that they just need to be trained. But the syntax is different enough that they are reluctant to try.

Second, installation and package management. This is part of what is now expected to be easy. If Lisp doesn't have an install and package management that is as easy as, say, Perl, that's a problem that will turn people off to Lisp.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#117

Post by taeric »

nerpderp83 wrote: post #115

This is not good , the info density for the screen area is too low. This could have been one maybe two screens worth. Is this the credits to Friends? Am I consuming Lisp Content while chillin in my penthouse on my 20k couch using a gold plated IPad X Tablet? Millennials are Killing Common Lisp. one page, https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/

I can see how it can be annoying to have to scroll to see everything. That said, I also find the page somewhat pretty.

I suspect preconceptions of the language going into the page make a big difference.

Which is not to criticize the Rust page. It is also nice, just different.

I will offer that proclaiming that Millenials are Killing Common Lisp is probably more effective at alienating potential users than a redesigned home page. :(

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#118

Post by eslaught »

drmeister wrote: post #64

This is a very nice web site describing a programming language with unparalleled expressiveness, power and permanence. I am heavily invested in Common Lisp. We are developing a programming environment for designing new materials and molecules called Cando ( https://github.com/drmeister/cando ) using Common Lisp as a scripting language. Cando is running on Clasp ( https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp ), a new Com…

Since you're already using LLVM, I'm wondering if you've thought about adding something similar to the includec function in Terra [1] which uses Clang to parse C headers. I used to think that Lisp's CFFI was the best FFI out there until I saw that it was possible to literally parse a C header file and have it "just work". It seems like if you're already building against LLVM, so bundling Clang with your project too might not be that big of a jump for you.

[1]: http://terralang.org/api.html#using-c-inside-terra . The same idea also occurs in e.g. Python DragonFFI.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#119

Post by vesak »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #112
vesak wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when I wrote the comment, I kinda guessed that people would point out the zombie-like state of living for these languages. That's only barely being alive, though, and very much faded. (I did have C in there but edited it out. I don't think that's a dead language yet.)

But isn't Lisp almost as zombie-like as Perl or COBOL? (4GL I'll probably give you...)

Well, yes :) And 4GL languages are actively being used to create new business, so who knows what's dead and what's not.

Perhaps the whole programming field is just a bunch of undead things. Sometimes a bunch of living things stumble upon the field, but they're soon infected...

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#120

Post by Volt »

lenkite wrote: post #39
xyrouter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of static typing does not explain why there are so many companies using Python, Ruby and Perl but very few using Lisp. If the lack of static typing was the real cause of the lack of popularity of Lisp then Python, Ruby and Perl also would have been unpopular.

Because each of these dynamic languages offered one feature which was/is the best in the world at the time. Python today has the best numeric computing libraries (numpy and sisters) which make it the most widely adopted language for scientific computing, ML, etc. Ruby had Rails - the web framework that trail-blazed convention over configuration and rapid productivity and was considered leading just a few years ago. R…

Python enjoyed a whole lot of popularity before the ML trend took off. If that's the best thing going for it, I don't think it really answers the question.
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