Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

letoverlambda.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 99 posts

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#61

Post by cracauer »

agumonkey wrote: post #50

slightly related: the clasp/cando team has some news to share Putting this here because I'm not aware of a lot of research done in/with lisp these days (only other thing I know is the quantum computer dsl) https://old.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/axu858/here_is_what_w... > This our (thirdlaw.tech's) computational chemistry system Cando. Some might remember it from Lisp conferences or our previous videos. Here is a demo…

That is me, I'm half of that team (Martin Cracauer).

If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer.

If you want to learn more about the programming side of our work (not so chemical), check out our other videos. They are from programming conferences: Longer talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X69_42Mj-g&t=177s&index=3&l...

Shorter one from the LLVM meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYYH2zF41fc&list=PLbl4KVdl9U...

(yes, the whole system is a compiler using LLVM as the last stage to make machine code from abstract assembly. The thing I always missed in SBCL)

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#62

Post by _19qg »

sametmax wrote: post #38
4thaccount wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Yet Common Lisp nicely scales to very large programs, some which have been maintained for decades. MLOC range.

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#63

Post by cracauer »

rhizome31 wrote: post #59

Is there a prominent open source project written in Common Lisp? Something like Pandoc for Haskell or RabbitMQ for Erlang?

Common Lisp has a package manager/source repository called Quicklisp. https://www.cliki.net/Quicklisp%20tutorial

There are some web frameworks in there that are fairly impressive.

There is very little advertising going on. It goes a bit back to what your folks mentioned here, a bit of dejection and being condescending to other languages. Common Lisp is the only language with reasonable compile-time computing right now, and it is hard to bring that concept over to people who still think about writing software, as opposed to living with changing software for 30 years. So the Lisp community is a bit in the mindset that those who get it do so on their own, and software is distributed among those who already know they want.

The Cando chemical computation system (based on Clasp) in the video posted below/above is open source, BTW.

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#64

Post by jwhite »

black-tea wrote: post #3
wirrbel wrote: post #2

Worth 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.

I thought it was great, but I know it's not a book for snowflakes. When I hear someone say "this is right" or "this is wrong", I am able to effortlessly interpret this as "I believe this is right/wrong". It's just being efficient with language. I don't need people to add extra words for fear of offending me. Maybe the author was immature. That's great. Let it remind you what it's like to be young and so excited about…

I agree.

Something that might be worth noting: two minutes of googling didn't turn up the author's age, but I recall seeing this photo on his website when I bought it some time after it was published in 2008: https://hcsw.org/contact.php

Here's a more up-to-date photo: https://hoytech.com/about

It's possible he was quite young when it was published. If that's the case, then I think the book is all the more a towering achievement. It's abrasive, and it smells a bit of 2000s forum fanboy discussions, but mature people should be able to read past the more opinionated parts and find the gems in the technical treatment.

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#65

Post by cracauer »

rhizome31 wrote: post #59

Is there a prominent open source project written in Common Lisp? Something like Pandoc for Haskell or RabbitMQ for Erlang?

Actually the whole cl-jupyter concept (used in the Cando demo) might also qualify. You can build really impressive blends of text-based statement and GUI in a webbrowser with Jupyter notebooks, and the CL version really kicks ass.

I need to get cracking on backporting the changes we made to cl-jupyter for Cando/Clasp to portable Common Lisp tho. Sigh. So little time.

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#66

Post by pjmlp »

cracauer wrote: post #56
maze-le wrote: post #16

Earlier 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...

Well, keep in mind that "macros" in Lisp are really compile-time computing. In Lisp you have the same language at your disposal at runtime and at compile time. In C/C++ you have the preprocessor, which is a really lousy language. And in C++ templates. Remember the "template metaprogramming" hype about 10 years ago? How far did they go? Compute some prime numbers? I mean C++ templates are a compile-time language, but…

> I mean C++ templates are a compile-time language, but they are a language that has only one type - types and no real iterations over collection types. Wait, they have no collection types. The one and only type is types.

There is Boost.Hana and the older Boost MPL and brigand.

C++20 will have more constexpr improvements.

Although I do conceed they require a C++ Wizard hat, and aren't not even close of Lisp's macros friendliness.

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#67

Post by zodmaner »

rhizome31 wrote: post #59

Is there a prominent open source project written in Common Lisp? Something like Pandoc for Haskell or RabbitMQ for Erlang?

pgloader [0] is one example.

Interestingly, it was originally written in Python, but the author decided to rewrite the entire thing in Common Lisp due mainly to Python's poor performance and the lack of native thread support. The result Common Lisp version is 30 times faster than the old Python one. More info can be found in the author's blog post [1].

[0] https://pgloader.io/

[1] https://tapoueh.org/blog/2014/05/why-is-pgloader-so-much-fas...

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#68

Post by agumonkey »

cracauer wrote: post #61
agumonkey wrote: post #50

slightly related: the clasp/cando team has some news to share Putting this here because I'm not aware of a lot of research done in/with lisp these days (only other thing I know is the quantum computer dsl) https://old.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/axu858/here_is_what_w... > This our (thirdlaw.tech's) computational chemistry system Cando. Some might remember it from Lisp conferences or our previous videos. Here is a demo…

That is me, I'm half of that team (Martin Cracauer). If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer. If you want to learn more about the programming side of our work (not so chemical), check out our other videos. They are from programming conferences: Longer talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X69_42Mj-g&t=177s&index=3&l... Shorter one from the LLVM meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYYH2zF41fc&list=PLbl4…

Oh well I just had a question but not related to cando itself more about how you structure your research project / team / finance. But maybe that's not a place to discuss this.

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#69

Post by varjag »

coldtea wrote: post #35
varjag wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In which way for example Siebel's PCL is "walking on eggshells"? On Lisp? PAIP? Am I super obtuse and missing some very obvious and important point they are tiptoeing around?

Even if one does really think it's important to convey they are presenting superior technology, it can be stated clearly and concisely without sounding corrosive.

Re: Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008)

#70

Post by sametmax »

_19qg wrote: post #62
sametmax wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Yet Common Lisp nicely scales to very large programs, some which have been maintained for decades. MLOC range.

And I bet you $10k that mostly 10x programmers work on the code base. In fact, I've never seen an average Joe taking interest in Lisp, let alone learning it to the point of making a living with it.

And there is a limited pool of that.

We, humans, also have work to do.

Post reply on HN