Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008) • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by lispm » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #70

_19qg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I've never seen an average Joe taking interest in Lisp, let alone learning it to the point of making a living with it.

Average Joe and Susi have been for 3+ decades nicely programming lots of extensions to AutoCAD and its various clones in Lisp.

Generally I agree that Lisp programming is a bit more challenging due to the slight mathematical nature (lambda, ...), code as data and meta-programming.

I don't think that one needs to be a 10x programmer to use Lisp - many of those 10x programmers are not programming in Lisp, since the 10x programmer gets hired because he/she might be able to cope with enterprise Java architectures.

Since Lisp is a programmer amplifier, you might think that these Lisp users are 10x programmers, when in fact they are not.

But there are domains where people are using Lisp, who are not focused on programming. For example there are various Lisp-based music apps + literature which are used by composers. Example: https://opusmodus.com

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

#72

Post by rhizome31 » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

cracauer wrote: post #65

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.

Thanks. As someone who is very much into Jupyter, this hits home! I don't know anything about chemistry, but the demo looks cool :)

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

#73

Post by rhizome31 » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

zodmaner wrote: post #67

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…

Interesting and can actually come handy at work! Thanks

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

#74

Post by ratsimihah » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

I tried to read it as a first Lisp book, that was very theoretical. I just write Lisp these days while looking up what I need on-demand. Will probably give it another read when I have a better idea of what Lisp is.

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

#75

Post by PuercoPop » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

rhizome31 wrote: post #59

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

There is StumpWM, a tiling Window Manager.

[0]: https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm

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

#76

Post by PuercoPop » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

mjaniczek wrote: post #11

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.

https://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap6.html Yeah, the sixth chapter sure bashes on Scheme a lot. :/

As others have noted its written in 'rant form' so its bound to happen. The weird thing is that it doesn't seem to bash on Perl at all! The Appendix on Editors bashes Emacs a lot too. Its an OK book _if_ you enjoy reading rants, but if you want to Learn Lisp, Practical Common Lisp or Land of Lisp are way better.

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

#77

Post by fiddlerwoaroof » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

rhizome31 wrote: post #59

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

Allegro NFS is an NFS server for windows written in CL:

https://nfsforwindows.com/home

(It's open source but uses features of a proprietary CL implementation: https://github.com/franzinc/nfs )

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

#78

Post by fiddlerwoaroof » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

PuercoPop wrote: post #23

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...

Do you say that out of experience? That is certainly not my _experience_. Lisp codebases tend to be easily "appropiable"

Yeah, Common Lisp is one of the few languages where I feel comfortable diving into a foreign code base and submitting patches.

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

#79

Post by PuercoPop » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #29

PuercoPop wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you say that out of experience? That is certainly not my _experience_. Lisp codebases tend to be easily "appropiable"

It sounds more like someone's musing of why Lisp should be bad idea rather than anything practical. Doubly so when they don't seem to know what Common Lisp is.

I agree it _sounds_ like an armchair critic, but I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they had a bad experience involving Lisp?

The actively hostile to collaborative programming seems particularly misguided. Even an extreme case like the code from hu.dwim, which is written in practically a new language they built on top of CL and has barely any documentation is still fairly easy to understand.

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

#80

Post by radiator » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

eatonphil wrote: post #44

I enjoyed this book. I personally did not find it condescending. Additionally, the implementation of a Forth interpreter in this book is the best introduction to Forth I've seen (even after years spent playing with Forth and reading one or two books on Forth). But I don't recommend this book as an introduction to (Common) Lisp. I recommend this order: 1. Practical Common Lisp 2. On Lisp (kind of a big jump, so maybe…

- COMMON LISP: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation (1990)

- Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp (1991)

- Common Lisp Recipes (2015)