How I lost my faith in Lisp

TLDR Person found out other people can be immensely productive with other languages. Then person learned languages X, Y and Z with cool libraries and is now very productive and happy using them.

TLDR TLDR Libraries make a big difference!

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#5

Post by kleiba » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 8:05 AM UTC

Unfortunately, the post spends most of its length on the author's professional history. It is only towards the end in which he spends a sentence or two talking about when he "lost his faith" in Lisp, but still gives not a lot of reasons. Basically, as far as I can tell, there are two major points: he used to think Lisp is great, but (1) no-one else seems to be using it and (2) the perceived superiority of Lisp was debunked when he observed experts in other programming languages.

Perhaps his priors were a bit off (seeing Lisp as the holy grail of all programming languages), but I think it is still fair to ask why Lisp has failed commercially? This has been discussed before, however (Lisp "wars" in the 80s, AI winter, etc.)

I find the way he ends his post interesting, where he argues that Lips has to evolve and improve. The article is from 2002 and in the mean time, a lot has actually happened in the Lisp world. New dialects like arc and clojure have created a renewed interest in Lisps. It would be interesting to know what the author thinks of these developments, and whether they could revive his personal faith.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#6

Post by Markku » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 8:20 AM UTC

Markku wrote: post #4

TLDR Person found out other people can be immensely productive with other languages. Then person learned languages X, Y and Z with cool libraries and is now very productive and happy using them. TLDR TLDR Libraries make a big difference!

To add some detail.

Programming languages live and die by their libraries, i.e. vocabulary. The differences in grammar are in my opinion rather small, when we talk about how expressive a clever programmer can be. Can a person be even more expressive in Lisp? Perhaps but it's not essential. The library support on the other hand is essential. You want to stand on the shoulders of giants for the next step. In all modern languages you can write elaborate, expressive libraries (read DSLs) for your pet problems.

I think my TLDR summarizes the original author's post but if someone disagrees, then we can have a fruitful discussion :)

Disclaimer I use Java and Racket daily.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#7

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 8:31 AM UTC

Markku wrote: post #4

TLDR Person found out other people can be immensely productive with other languages. Then person learned languages X, Y and Z with cool libraries and is now very productive and happy using them. TLDR TLDR Libraries make a big difference!

Honestly, I'll probably get crucified for this, but:

tl;dr it's possible to be a Blub programmer in Lisp.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#8

Post by itsadok » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 8:32 AM UTC

Pervious discussion on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107683

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#9

Post by civil » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 8:34 AM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #5

Unfortunately, the post spends most of its length on the author's professional history. It is only towards the end in which he spends a sentence or two talking about when he "lost his faith" in Lisp, but still gives not a lot of reasons. Basically, as far as I can tell, there are two major points: he used to think Lisp is great, but (1) no-one else seems to be using it and (2) the perceived superiority of Lisp was de…

It would be interesting to know what the author thinks of these developments, and whether they could revive his personal faith.

"Erann Gat" and "Ron Garret" are the same person; you find him on c.l.l. regularly since 2004.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#10

Post by mcn » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 8:39 AM UTC

This is from the same Erann Gat (aka Ron Garret) who wrote the popular lisp at the JPL essay[1], and it covers some of the same ground.

His last point, that lisp can and should be improved, is one that he makes periodically. There's a barrier to some improvements to Common Lisp caused by the fact that the standard has been long closed and doesn't look like it will be reopened, but there have been improvement in areas that are outside of the standard.

For example both Ron's extended post and the previous hn discussion of this post note the pain of finding and installing lisp libraries. Quicklisp beta was recently released which relieves a significant amount of that pain.

[1]http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

Edit: I noticed this in the previous posting of this thread:

Ron> For the record, I did not submit this article, and specifically declined a request to do so. It's not that I don't stand by what I wrote (I do) but it was written for a specific audience at a specific time and I don't think it deserves the attention that it's getting now.

...

akkartik> I noticed. http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-are-programming-lang... Thanks.