Live data from Hacker News

Common Lisp homepage

lisp-lang.org

261–270 of 313 posts

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#261
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least optional typing and macros are not considered to be universal benefits for programming. That's just your opinion. >Having a ton of features has been proven in many occasions to be counterproductive. Paradox of choice, higher learning curve, etc. Ok, let's see you need to get the numerical value of several big integrals. You have two choices: a. Pen and paper plus calculator. b. Computer with sophisticated c…

You seem to be a bit too... enthusiastic about this conversation, for my tastes :) I won't go into everything cause it would take way too much time, but I have to point one thing out: > Optional typing dramatically increases execution speed, something that is very relevant and important in 2018. As compared to what? I'm guessing your assumption was that I was thinking about purely dynamic languages? Not really, I was…

I don't understand what point is. Do you agree that Lisp metaprogramming has benefits or do you disagree with that?

If you agree, then what is your point? That we should not use a powerful language because it is not popular? Or that features in popular languages are the only features worth having?

If you disagree, can you elaborate what exactly about Lisp metaprogramming do you not find powerful? That would make your arguments more concrete. Otherwise you are just going around in circles stating the same opinion over and over again which is really only your opinion that many of us don't seem to agree with.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is simply that niche languages are harder to hire for and find a job in. Most people aren't okay with that. There is a feedback loop here as less people use it and less libraries are written. That doesn't mean the language is inferior to Java in any way, but a new developer has to stay relevant by learning languages and frameworks that people use in-house. This is a major reason it isn't popular. I have 300…

You don't have to hire for Lisp, or any language for that matter. Picking up a language is way easier than fundamental skills (statistics for AI for example). IIRC Dan Weinreb of ITA fame said they gave their new hires a copy Practical Common Lisp and two weeks. You know, the book that you dissed earlier in the thread w/o an argument. > less libraries are written. Given that Sturgeon was an optimist[0], that is hardl…

Once again, you quote isolated incidents when I'm talking about the entire programming industry. I never said it wouldn't work for some people.

It might have been Tarver talking about the Lisp curse. Lisp is so powerful that everyone kind of does their own thing while devs of C++ and Java have to band together and make massive libraries. This is a different argument, but I think your discounting the usefulness of some of the gargantuan libraries and frameworks out there. I'm not saying fundamentals aren't good, but a data scientist doesn't need to know about homoiconicity...they need Numpy/Scypy.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#263
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You quoted two companies using Lisp when there are millions of Java devs. That's like a boxer with a record of 1-500. I love Lisp, but c'mon...I guarantee it has far more hobby users than professional users. ABCL, FRANZ, ALLEGRO, SBCL, CLISP, GNU CL, Clozure might all be common lisp, but they are different implementations with different tools that will confuse a new person and several cost money. Practical Common Lis…

> ABCL, FRANZ, ALLEGRO, SBCL, CLISP, GNU CL, Clozure might all be common lisp, but they are different implementations with different tools That's better than having different languages with different tools: Python, Ruby, Perl, ... share nothing - though they are in a similar coding domain.

Fair enough argument here, although you could probably still argue that it is easier to setup most of those languages than use emacs. That's a non-starter for a lot of devs who aren't open to the long-term benefits.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#264
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allright, let's take some list of what can be understood for "mainstream" languages (because, according to other criteria, Lisp is mainstream too.) TIOBE index top 10: Java, C, C++, Python, C#, Visual Basic.NET, PHP, Javascript, SQL, Ruby. let's compare to Lisp and Haskell: - NONE of those langs have the hindley-milner type system, type inference and typeclasses of Haskell. - even Common Lisp's type system is more so…

I do like Lisp, but you should learn better the languages you criticize. C++ allows for compile time execution, improving since C++11. A feature also shared by Nim, D and Jai. C# does offer control how the GC operates, and allows for manually memory management if really required. A feature also supported by D, Modula-3, Active Oberon. .NET Expression trees can be manipulated at runtime. There are GC enabled system pr…

Indeed, Nim also offers a lot of control over its GC. You can disable it or control precisely when it runs and for how long.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#265
post #65

(mapcar #'string-downcase (list "Hello" "world!")) This is a great example of why I don't want to use Common Lisp. Compare with Python: [word.lower() for word in ("Hello", "world!")] Beating Node and Ruby in terms of speed is also a big non-argument, with so many attractive programming languages to choose from that are both fast and good looking.

Can you elaborate on why? I know both Python and Common Lisp, neither version looks any better than the other to me. Also, as another commenter notes, the snippets are not actually good translations of each other. Your CL snippet would look like this in Python: list(map(str.tolower, ("Hello", "world!"))) While your Python snippet would look like this in CL (as pavelludiq notes): (loop for word in '("Hello" "world!")…

Actually, lisp varian can be also a:

    (mapcar #'string-downcase '("Hello" "world!"))

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#266
post #52
post #37

My AI class teacher was one of the founders of Siscog. I learned scheme and lisp at college too. Glad to see his company being mentioned.

You might be pleased or displeased to know that at Técnico they no longer teach Scheme in the introductory programming course, nowadays it's Python. When I did the AI course, the project was still to be developed in Lisp, but more recently I recall hearing that they were thinking of switching to another language because "nobody can stand lisp". Fun fact: one of the founders of Siscog, Ernesto Morgado[1], is big in th…

In hindsight, displeased for sure.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#267
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And a programmer in your average mainstream language in 2018 could reasonably expect to be working in the same language in 2018." Pretty radical claim there, are you sure about that? :)

It’s simple math, really. Let’s say we had 1 million programmers in the 80’s, writing enteprise software costing 1m * 8h * 365d * 10y = too lazy to do the math, let’s say 30 billion dollars. A lot of that software died with the companies using it, so maybe 10 billions’ worth survived, needing today N C programmers, P Cobol programmers, etc. for maintenance. How do you think the numbers and the timespans look from a t…

"2018...2018"

Obviously you made a typo there. I was just poking fun and wondering what time frame you really had in mind.

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#268
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simple math, really. Let’s say we had 1 million programmers in the 80’s, writing enteprise software costing 1m * 8h * 365d * 10y = too lazy to do the math, let’s say 30 billion dollars. A lot of that software died with the companies using it, so maybe 10 billions’ worth survived, needing today N C programmers, P Cobol programmers, etc. for maintenance. How do you think the numbers and the timespans look from a t…

"2018...2018" Obviously you made a typo there. I was just poking fun and wondering what time frame you really had in mind.

2018 - 2038 :)

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#269
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allright, let's take some list of what can be understood for "mainstream" languages (because, according to other criteria, Lisp is mainstream too.) TIOBE index top 10: Java, C, C++, Python, C#, Visual Basic.NET, PHP, Javascript, SQL, Ruby. let's compare to Lisp and Haskell: - NONE of those langs have the hindley-milner type system, type inference and typeclasses of Haskell. - even Common Lisp's type system is more so…

I do like Lisp, but you should learn better the languages you criticize. C++ allows for compile time execution, improving since C++11. A feature also shared by Nim, D and Jai. C# does offer control how the GC operates, and allows for manually memory management if really required. A feature also supported by D, Modula-3, Active Oberon. .NET Expression trees can be manipulated at runtime. There are GC enabled system pr…

Thanks Pascal, i got stuck in C++ before the C++11 improvements.

As for the other languages (D, Oberon), my comparison was to the "popular, mainstream" languages the guy was rooting for.

>There are GC enabled system programming languages that are as fast as Lisp, like D, Modula-3 or even the new .NET Native toolchain.

I wrote "none faster than Lisp" which means "equal or lower in speed to Lisp"

Re: Common Lisp homepage

#270
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allright, let's take some list of what can be understood for "mainstream" languages (because, according to other criteria, Lisp is mainstream too.) TIOBE index top 10: Java, C, C++, Python, C#, Visual Basic.NET, PHP, Javascript, SQL, Ruby. let's compare to Lisp and Haskell: - NONE of those langs have the hindley-milner type system, type inference and typeclasses of Haskell. - even Common Lisp's type system is more so…

Did you mention conditions and restarts? That's a big deal too, missing in many languages.

No, I didn't. You are right.
Post reply on HN