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Why Lisp? (2015)

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Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#91

Post by metroholografix »

hesk wrote: post #26

What's a good Lisp dialect to write small programs in? I have some Emacs Lisp experience but I wouldn't use it to automate small tasks. For that, I typically use Python.

Emacs Lisp is better than fine. You get a powerful Lisp (with a lot of goodies from CL) that is both portable and ultra-stable whilst having a self-contained VM and an enormous library of code available (Emacs) on every system imaginable.

Here is an example of scripting a small task:

https://gist.github.com/atomontage/64b767731b5896f1c6113adb9...

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#92

Post by dunefox »

nemo1618 wrote: post #81
Zababa wrote: post #30

That article partially validates my idea on why some people think that Lisp is such a force multiplier. The idea would be that compilers are one of the most important tool productivity-wise, and that Lisp allows you write your compilers yourself. That would also explain why not Lisp: First, libaries are the new important tool for productivity, and any language can have that. Second, a shared understanding is very imp…

> Shared understanding is important for building and maintaining software. I think this is where Go (the language) really shines. Go is "boring" -- there are no macros, no operator overloading, no default arguments, none of that sort of thing. But if your goal is shared understanding, "boring" is a compliment. "Boring" means "after using the language for a few years, I can be confident that I will never be surprised…

I don't want this kind of "shared understanding" if it means that I have to program in the most basic, underdeveloped language. It's the interface with the computer and used to convey meaning.

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#93

Post by medo-bear »

lisper wrote: post #84

I guess I'm a little late to the party, but... author here. AMA. :-)

do you still use lisp ? i noticed a while ago you were working on a cryptographic project and i am sure you considered common lisp for this, but didn't pick it. is there a reason for this ?

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#94

Post by vindarel »

hajile wrote: post #72
gaze wrote: post #69

Why does it feel like there’s more prose about lisp being written than lisp code? I swear there’s like 15 people writing Common Lisp — Nikodemus, Shirakumo, Stylewarning, Christian Schafmeister, Borodust, the ITA folks, and maybe 2 startups.

There are three commercial lisp companies that continue to exist selling CL platforms. They exist despite SBCL being faster. They even make stuff like tools to build iOS and Android apps in CL. They didn't invest the money building that that out for no reason. The companies that use lisp don't tend to talk about it. For example, a company I worked for only talked about their Ruby/rails and javascript stuff publicly.…

Cool. Do you think we can know it now?

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#95

Post by dunefox »

Zababa wrote: post #30

That article partially validates my idea on why some people think that Lisp is such a force multiplier. The idea would be that compilers are one of the most important tool productivity-wise, and that Lisp allows you write your compilers yourself. That would also explain why not Lisp: First, libaries are the new important tool for productivity, and any language can have that. Second, a shared understanding is very imp…

This is no different from any other language lacking libraries, except that with Lisp you're using a proven, powerful language. And if you want libraries there's a python bridge and a whole CL on the JVM with interop.

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#96

Post by vindarel »

gaze wrote: post #69

Why does it feel like there’s more prose about lisp being written than lisp code? I swear there’s like 15 people writing Common Lisp — Nikodemus, Shirakumo, Stylewarning, Christian Schafmeister, Borodust, the ITA folks, and maybe 2 startups.

also me o/ and https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/ (but I understand your feeling^^)

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#97

Post by dunefox »

pddpro wrote: post #62

I started my programming in the more "traditional" way i.e., C/C++ and then later python. When I started doing python, I was flabbergasted to find that I could just do 100**100 and get a complete number without using any additional libraries. Similarly, reversing string was trivial using the [::-1] notation. Heterogeneity of Lists, Dictionaries and the resulting versatility blew my mind. I now understand that I was d…

> I would appreciate a few concrete examples (very much like [::-1] and 100*100) that would allow me to get what LISP really is about.

You mean like (reverse "asd") and (* 10000 10000)? That's not really what gives you an impression of Lisp, rather a bit of syntax ([::-1], the paragon of readability) and large integers. :P

This article might help: https://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html

Also, if you really want to see what it's about you can read SICP: https://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/ https://github.com/sarabander/sicp

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#98

Post by medo-bear »

bmitc wrote: post #80

I love Lisp and Scheme and all their relatives (Clojure, Logo, Racket, etc.). However, the fact of the matter is, Common Lisp has not kept up with modern developments in terms of presenting a cohesive ecosystem with forward momentum. Everybody is off on their own doing their own thing with no shared goals or cohesion. Clojure seems to have this (I have not used Clojure much, so I don't really know). Elixir definitely…

can you write compilers in elixir ? how does its interactive programming compare to that of Lisp ?

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#99

Post by Jach »

gaze wrote: post #69

Why does it feel like there’s more prose about lisp being written than lisp code? I swear there’s like 15 people writing Common Lisp — Nikodemus, Shirakumo, Stylewarning, Christian Schafmeister, Borodust, the ITA folks, and maybe 2 startups.

Probably because if you aren't paying that much attention to Lisp software, the almost 40 years of writing about Common Lisp will surface more so than the code and their authors. And a lot of code (millions of lines) isn't open and a lot is probably lost to time. Though it seems like you know about a handful of the current era superstars, yet you're forgetting or don't know about other superstars. And there's a long tail of less prolific developers. But sure, just comparing the open source stuff in Quicklisp, there's only about 2500 projects (vs 335k projects on PyPI), and the frequency of new stuff regardless of whether it shows up or not in quicklisp is slow enough that you could follow https://twitter.com/NewLispRepos/ and not have your timeline overwhelmed.

Re: Why Lisp? (2015)

#100

Post by vindarel »

bmitc wrote: post #80

I love Lisp and Scheme and all their relatives (Clojure, Logo, Racket, etc.). However, the fact of the matter is, Common Lisp has not kept up with modern developments in terms of presenting a cohesive ecosystem with forward momentum. Everybody is off on their own doing their own thing with no shared goals or cohesion. Clojure seems to have this (I have not used Clojure much, so I don't really know). Elixir definitely…

mmh Elixir definitely has its gems and I need to try it for real. Where I can see it's lacking: no compile-time type warnings (unless you're using a new language on top or using a third-party library, but then we should compare more thoroughly), no compilation with a keystroke function per function. No static executable (even though deployment options are getting better in Elixir (we had to wait though)). Some compilation times, when you change one file and Elixir needs to compile a dozen. We are not inside a live image. I tried Alchemist mode for Emacs: no function signature? No "eval this expression"? Can you switch projects from inside a REPL, or you have to start a new one? No cross-reference capacities built-in? (who calls this function, this macro, who sets, etc) No inspect? No trace? No interactive debugger and no stepper? If only available with LSP and VSCode, then it's strictly inferior. Elixir is less performant in crunching numbers. Less to no GUI framework choice (WxWidgets). No industry-grade theorem prover? (ACL2) Unfit for quantum computing? Unable to program Intel chips? (Barefoot Networks) No computer algebra system? No music composition suite (Opus Modus)?

CL's ecosystem might be better than one thinks: https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl & https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/state-of-the-common-lisp...

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