This book has managed to convince me that common lisp is a great language for people who have never used a good programming language, and who you intensely dislike.
Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
31–40 of 99 posts
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#32Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s a great second book. For a first I’ve always recommended Practical Common Lisp. I don’t know if that recommendation is still up to date.
I would recommend it to a Lisp enthusiast as a third after On Lisp. That's how I read it, anyway. Many things in LOL are quite opinionated. I don't think it's a distillation of knowledge (like On Lisp), but rather an exploration how far you can take some things (macros).
As a reminder, Paul Graham's On Lisp is freely downloadable, in PDF or PostScript via links on this page at PaulGraham.com:
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, you know, the author knows his stuff and is deservedly condescending in an industry of trends and cargo cults. As in arts and politics, some curmudgeons are needed in every field, if not for anything else, to show that there's another way than the mainstream. (They don't have to be perfectly right either -- it's having a strong perspective that counts, nobody is 100% right anyway).
"Deservedly condescending" is not an actual thing that exists in the world. The words you're looking for are "writes poorly."
>"Deservedly condescending" is not an actual thing that exists in the world.
There's absolutely no rational reason for it not to be a thing.
"Politely condescending" might be a contradiction in terms, but some people just lend themselves to being treated condescendingly.
Same thing with how some people might deserve a sarcastic response -- sarcasm is not that remote from condescension.
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, you know, the author knows his stuff and is deservedly condescending in an industry of trends and cargo cults. As in arts and politics, some curmudgeons are needed in every field, if not for anything else, to show that there's another way than the mainstream. (They don't have to be perfectly right either -- it's having a strong perspective that counts, nobody is 100% right anyway).
There are numerous great Lisp books by knowledgeable authors which have none of that attitude. Life is too short to read printouts of Usenet rants.
Well, to each their own. For me life's too short to read authors walking on eggshells.
Of course for a technical book it's the technical content that matters -- whether it's presented politely or not.
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#36> it describes the most advanced features of the most advanced language: COMMON LISP.
I thought Haskell surpassed it a long time ago already.
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#37Worth a read because it is one the most condescending computing books I have ever read. While reading I got the impression that I read the text of a really immature fanboy in a web forum of the 2000s. I hope the author has matured by now. Seriously, don't buy this book.
https://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap6.html Yeah, the sixth chapter sure bashes on Scheme a lot. :/
I always wonder if Common Lispers who bash Scheme know that Guy Steele (who also is the chairman of the Common Lisp standards committee) was the co-creator of Scheme.
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, its a trip to hell to maintain any lisp codebase -- especially if it contains macros. I think it is actively hostile to collaborative programming, and that is a structural problem where there is no remedy but obscure programming patterns (which are amplifying these problems in some instances). With that in mind -- boasting about 'the most advanced language' is a bit of a stretch -- to say the least...
They're looking at it from the point of one to a few coders and you're looking at it from an industrial view with larger teams. I think it probably shines more in the former. If macros aren't overused, it's probably not all that different from other dynamic languages like Python that work fine with larger teams.
It is very different than Python.
In Lisp, they say "here is a tool that can do anything. Have fun". In Python they say: "here are many tools that are specific and limited to that purpose. Also you gona take bad decisions, so we limited it some more".
The first approach is appealing to very good programmers. The second one, to anybody who had to work with the vast majority of normal programmers.
I prefer the second one. People abuse macros, make way to long lambdas, don't document their magic and indent poorly if they are not forced to.
Since tooling is something people always learn too late, I'm going with the language with sane defaults.
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#39> it describes the most advanced features of the most advanced language: COMMON LISP. I thought Haskell surpassed it a long time ago already.
So where's Haskell's advanced object system or the restart/condition system that Common Lisp has? Even its performance is hardly on par with CL for all the flexibility of the latter.
Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)
#40This book has managed to convince me that common lisp is a great language for people who have never used a good programming language, and who you intensely dislike.
I'm going to take the word of someone who made an account just to bash a poor lisp book. Thanks.