In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#31

Post by jplayer01 » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

adriftincode wrote: post #4

jacques_chester wrote: post #3

[2011].

Why do people tag the year on articles? I feel like hackers cling to the “if it’s not new, it’s not worthy” paradigm. Update: Thanks for all the replies, makes sense. Why downvote an honest question?

There's a difference between an honest question and the "I feel like hackers cling to the..." bit, which is an entirely unfair accusation. Not once have I seen a post negatively commented on just because of its age. Old posts are far more positively received here than elsewhere, and you'll often see a comment linking all previous posts because each time it's posted interesting discussion has come up which shouldn't be ignored.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#32

Post by s_Hogg » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #25

s_Hogg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really, that's interesting. Is that sort of info widely known among the HN user base and I'm an ignoramus or is it a case of some of the users of longer standing being vocal about Lisp?

Among Lisp users this is known... Also if one knows a bit about Lisp history, the headline "O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp" triggers some memories, since for a long time O'Reilly actively discouraged people from trying to contact them about publishing Lisp books. ;-)

That's reasonably hilarious, thanks for the info :)

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#33

Post by breck » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

A lot of people (notably the creator of YCombinator and HackerNews) are arguably "in love with" Lisp.

I bet circa 1940's you would say the same thing about binary, and your question might be "why is X this interested in binary?"

Just as binary notation is a very simple notation that underlies all of computing, and has completely changed the world once an enthusiastic group of early adopters figured out how to leverage it, so goes Lisp. The details people haven't gotten quite right yet with Lisp, but once those are straightened out, imo, it will finally go mainstream like binary has.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#34

Post by Waterluvian » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

s_Hogg wrote: post #19

dreamcompiler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What organization hosts HN? From what computer science construct does that organization's name come from? Who founded that organization? How did that person get wealthy enough to start seed funding other companies? Did that person write not one, but two books on Common Lisp? Just some points to ponder.

Oh really, that's interesting. Is that sort of info widely known among the HN user base and I'm an ignoramus or is it a case of some of the users of longer standing being vocal about Lisp?

No no it's not just you. I get this kind of thing from the HN community now and then too.

I once got chewed out for not knowing who Paul Graham is.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#35

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

[deleted]

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#36

Post by toyg » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

sireat wrote: post #17

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

HN exists because of LISP. More precisely PG attributed success of Viaweb to LISP (speed of iteration etc) http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html I am pretty sure the key factor was having a small and talented team. It didn't have to be LISP. They could have used another language they were familiar with.

Even if you give LISP a role, one also has to consider that it was a time when the most popular languages (C++, early Java, Perl) were pretty low-level and not at all web-friendly or async-friendly. LISP could bridge that gap because it makes it very easy to build DSLs and "go up" in abstraction with minimal fuss. If you start with Python or Ruby and their popular frameworks, these days, most of that work is already done for you.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#37

Post by mepian » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

Annatar wrote: post #23

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

Because it can easily solve or altogether eschew a lot of the issues that object-oriented JavaScript developers are struggling with and that's barely scraping the tip of the iceberg of problems which Lisp doesn't suffer from. Alas one of the problems Lisp does quite acutely suffer from is that SBCL has become a defacto standard and its support for anything that isn't GNU/Linux (like Solaris / illumos) is dismal.

SBCL is open source, so you are free to improve the support for Solaris.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#38

Post by Der_Einzige » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

s_Hogg wrote: post #13

Why is HN this interested in Lisp anyway? Not saying it's a good or bad language, just don't quite get why it receives as much attention as it does.

Lain from the hit anime, "Serial experiments lain" used lisp when she coded

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#39

Post by mepian » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #36

sireat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN exists because of LISP. More precisely PG attributed success of Viaweb to LISP (speed of iteration etc) http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html I am pretty sure the key factor was having a small and talented team. It didn't have to be LISP. They could have used another language they were familiar with.

Even if you give LISP a role, one also has to consider that it was a time when the most popular languages (C++, early Java, Perl) were pretty low-level and not at all web-friendly or async-friendly. LISP could bridge that gap because it makes it very easy to build DSLs and "go up" in abstraction with minimal fuss. If you start with Python or Ruby and their popular frameworks, these days, most of that work is already…

Python already existed at that time for 4 years, at least.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#40

Post by CydeWeys » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #25

s_Hogg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really, that's interesting. Is that sort of info widely known among the HN user base and I'm an ignoramus or is it a case of some of the users of longer standing being vocal about Lisp?

Among Lisp users this is known... Also if one knows a bit about Lisp history, the headline "O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp" triggers some memories, since for a long time O'Reilly actively discouraged people from trying to contact them about publishing Lisp books. ;-)

Wait, why?