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Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

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Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#51

Post by cageface »

This is exactly the kind of cultish triumphalism that put me off Common Lisp. The inability of many lispers to see lisp, like all languages, as a collection of design tradeoffs instead of the one true way just clashed too sharply with reality for my tastes.

It's certainly true that lisp has been an important testbed for many concepts that have later made their way into the programming mainstream, but I suspect that many of the traits that make a good research language may actually be undesirable in a production language.

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#52

Post by bitsai »

cinch wrote: post #28

similar situation here. except i picked Common LISP. for a couple of reasons: speed of your app; SLIME is great; more documentation (books); a long history :)

Just wanted to point out that you can use slime with clojure as well:

http://github.com/technomancy/swank-clojure

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#53

Post by metamemetics »

bad_user wrote: post #46
metamemetics wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is and will be the de facto language of globalization. All of the world's elites speak it in every country. People will speak their local language, AND English. I think this is a given. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ftF8sXzoWk English will certainly outlast Chinese. The constitution of India is written in English and India will soon far eclipse China in terms of population. I think it's a given, is assumed…

If I'm hungry I would say "Hey, give me a Hot Dog". I wouldn't be drawing diagrams of synapses and how the chemical signals flow when I'm thinking about that Hot Dog. The issue of language parsing and how Lisp-like it is, it's incredibly irrelevant.

>I wouldn't be drawing diagrams of synapses and how the chemical signals flow

I actually think that's a pretty good analogy for what programmers do. You program the give function to accepted the variables nominative (you), accussative(hot dog), and dative(me). Now lets say you want to create multiple functions (give, send, take) that are operators on nominative, accussative, dative and want to reuse code easily. Or you want to use your "give" function to define what a "gift" is. No problem in LISP.

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#54

Post by jforman »

noglorp wrote: post #39

That Paul Graham quote - “Programming languages are not merely technologies, but habits of mind as well.” Reminds me of an excellent Dijkstra quote, from A Discipline of Programming - "A most important, but also a most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use."

Spoken languages affect our thought patterns:

http://www.newsweek.com/2009/07/08/what-s-in-a-word.html

It seems a natural extension that computing languages affect our logical thought patterns.

In college, I took a class on intelligence testing (I gave a lot of IQ tests that semester). The prof told me that his experience was that computer programmers score noticeably higher on the Verbal IQ scale, moreso than on the Performance IQ scale (these are the two scales the WAIS is divided into).

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#55

Post by bad_user »

metamemetics wrote: post #53
bad_user wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm hungry I would say "Hey, give me a Hot Dog". I wouldn't be drawing diagrams of synapses and how the chemical signals flow when I'm thinking about that Hot Dog. The issue of language parsing and how Lisp-like it is, it's incredibly irrelevant.

> I wouldn't be drawing diagrams of synapses and how the chemical signals flow I actually think that's a pretty good analogy for what programmers do. You program the give function to accepted the variables nominative (you), accussative(hot dog), and dative(me). Now lets say you want to create multiple functions (give, send, take) that are operators on nominative, accussative, dative and want to reuse code easily. Or…

Well yes ... LISP is like a language framework, with which you can evolve your own languages suitable for problem domains.

But I just don't get the correlation between its direct representation as syntax trees and being more natural to people (which the parent was arguing).

A language can have hooks for evolving into what you want, it's just incredibly hard to do it without a LISP syntax. But natural language ain't easy to parse either.

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#56

Post by metamemetics »

bad_user wrote: post #55
metamemetics wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't be drawing diagrams of synapses and how the chemical signals flow I actually think that's a pretty good analogy for what programmers do. You program the give function to accepted the variables nominative (you), accussative(hot dog), and dative(me). Now lets say you want to create multiple functions (give, send, take) that are operators on nominative, accussative, dative and want to reuse code easily. Or…

Well yes ... LISP is like a language framework, with which you can evolve your own languages suitable for problem domains. But I just don't get the correlation between its direct representation as syntax trees and being more natural to people (which the parent was arguing). A language can have hooks for evolving into what you want, it's just incredibly hard to do it without a LISP syntax. But natural language ain't e…

>being more natural to people

My argument was actually that things modeled after genetically evolved structures share in the advantages of increased genetic fitness inherent in that design. i.e. Survivability and future-proofness. [i.e. the OP may indeed not need to ever learn another language before he dies] It was not an argument that genetically evolved structures are easy to grok.

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#57

Post by neptun »

cageface wrote: post #51

This is exactly the kind of cultish triumphalism that put me off Common Lisp. The inability of many lispers to see lisp, like all languages, as a collection of design tradeoffs instead of the one true way just clashed too sharply with reality for my tastes. It's certainly true that lisp has been an important testbed for many concepts that have later made their way into the programming mainstream, but I suspect that m…

Common Lisp is not a research language. The goal of the comitee was to produce a language fit to industry needs.

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#58

Post by tomjen3 »

cageface wrote: post #51

This is exactly the kind of cultish triumphalism that put me off Common Lisp. The inability of many lispers to see lisp, like all languages, as a collection of design tradeoffs instead of the one true way just clashed too sharply with reality for my tastes. It's certainly true that lisp has been an important testbed for many concepts that have later made their way into the programming mainstream, but I suspect that m…

Then I urge you to look at it again - who cares what the users believe? What matters is what you get out of it.

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#59

Post by cageface »

tomjen3 wrote: post #58
cageface wrote: post #51

This is exactly the kind of cultish triumphalism that put me off Common Lisp. The inability of many lispers to see lisp, like all languages, as a collection of design tradeoffs instead of the one true way just clashed too sharply with reality for my tastes. It's certainly true that lisp has been an important testbed for many concepts that have later made their way into the programming mainstream, but I suspect that m…

Then I urge you to look at it again - who cares what the users believe? What matters is what you get out of it.

I hacked a lot of CL back in 2002-2003 and I've dabbled in Clojure lately. Clojure has a lot of promise but I'm waiting for some of the rough edges to get smoothed out (stacktraces in particular).

Re: Home at Last, or, The Last Programming Language I Will Ever Learn

#60

Post by [deleted] »

metamemetics wrote: post #31
adimitrov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll disagree. The features you listed apply to other languages much better than they do to English (except the bit about influential countries.) Chinese has a richer vocabulary, is more succinct and has a much less sophisticated grammatic system than English. If you want to get rid of the daunting logosyllabic way of writing, go Korean. Almost the same advantages, with one of the most beautiful and simple alphabets…

Exactly, English isn't perfect, yet it's still a great example of how something that's "good enough" can become dominant. I'm not saying it should be dominant, but that it is and will inevitably continue to be (there are more students taking SATs in China in ENGLISH than in the US+Britain). Also I would argue it's not just due to Britain's empire, but Rome's and Germanic tribes creating a long evolutionary path up to…

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