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A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

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Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#21

Post by ozten »

comfypotato wrote: post #4

He certainly implies that he thinks Common Lisp (and maybe Dylan) would have been as popular as Java is today if the lottery had played out differently. I wonder if anyone else feels this way. The programming world would be a different place. I can’t help but fantasize about how incredible eMacs would be by now if that had been the case. (Not that it isn’t already incredible.)

Sun Microsystems poured millions of dollars into marketing Java. During the dotcom bust billboards, posters, magazine ads, and online ads where common.

This massively accelerated it's adoption curve and built a valuable trademark which would be part of the reason Oracle paid $7 billion to buy it.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#22

Post by mirker »

fhd2 wrote: post #19

I find this part the most interesting: "Since then, my focus has been on AI research, and part of that involves the design of planning systems that (maybe) can eliminate the need for most programming. You tell them what you want, as you might describe it to a smart grad student, they maybe ask some clarification questions, and then they go do it. That only works if they know enough about the world and have enough "co…

Usually grad students get projects to investigate or prove a particular idea. It’s especially straightforward to do this when the advisor is iterating on a line of ideas, and you resume where the last grad student left off. There isn’t a point in building anything other than to test the idea, so you don’t want feedback to bias you in what direction to go.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#23

Post by going_ham »

fhd2 wrote: post #19

I find this part the most interesting: "Since then, my focus has been on AI research, and part of that involves the design of planning systems that (maybe) can eliminate the need for most programming. You tell them what you want, as you might describe it to a smart grad student, they maybe ask some clarification questions, and then they go do it. That only works if they know enough about the world and have enough "co…

If you can formulate your problem in the sense of classical planning problem, there are different sets of planners that can solve the problem. These methods are explainable. Some of them even give the optimal solution to your problem if you use optimal heuristics. This is what he means by that statement. The only issue is, right now the classical planning is hyperfocused into few problems and most of the methods work on narrow domains like path finding, logistics, constraints based problems and so on.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#24

Post by Mikeb85 »

In the 80's and 90's Common Lisp compilers and editors were insanely expensive. The hardware was too, not even sure if those early implementations ran on x86... That's why they didn't take off. Easy to look back with rose coloured lenses now that we've had free implementations for awhile...

Meanwhile C/C++, Pascal and Java were all accessible and cheap if not free...

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#25

Post by fm2606 »

dleslie wrote: post #5
lisper wrote: post #2

"What I came to understand, after years of work on Common Lisp and the death of Dylan, the ongoing popularity of the hideous C++, and the rise of Java, is that programming languages don't become mainstream based on their elegance or their deep utility. ... [T]he best languages very rarely take over, if ever. Some language starts being used because it has the backing of some big company or project, people doing simila…

He's overlooking an incredibly important factor: Java and C++ had capable, even enterprise quality free compilers at a time when Common Lisp environments were typically either hideously expensive or poorly supported or both. You could grab Sun's JDK for free, or GCC, or (later) Visual Studio Express at a time when the best options for Common Lisp were thousands of dollars per seat, or barely working on x86 (CMUCL did…

> I miss Turbo C

I started college in 1988 and they were offering copies of Turbo C with all the books for $5, but you had to supply the 5 1/4" disks.

I only lasted 1 1/2 years in college (that time around) so I didn't get to experience Unix or lisp or anything like that. Well I did take an IBM 370 assembly language class. Had to do the assignments on dumb terminals in the basement of the dorms and pick up the print outs in the basement of the CS building.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#26

Post by wrycoder »

nerdponx wrote: post #20
comfypotato wrote: post #4

He certainly implies that he thinks Common Lisp (and maybe Dylan) would have been as popular as Java is today if the lottery had played out differently. I wonder if anyone else feels this way. The programming world would be a different place. I can’t help but fantasize about how incredible eMacs would be by now if that had been the case. (Not that it isn’t already incredible.)

I think S-expressions are fundamentally too difficult to work with, without good editor support, to make Lisp anything other than a niche power tool for the highly motivated. I love CL, Scheme, Clojure, Janet, Fennel, etc. but I don't blame anyone for finding them inaccessible. I think Python, JavaScript, and Go have caught on for somewhat similar reasons, compared to Java and C#: they are easier to get started with,…

But, you always have good editor support. Lisp/Scheme has traditionally been coded using Emacs or its equivalent. With that support, the parens seem to disappear after you've been writing lisp for awhile.

Beginner lispy languages come with a suitable beginner IDE, e.g. Racket or Logo.

A typical lisp statement has a leading '(' and a trailing ')', which replaces the ';' in Algol-like languages. So, one additional character, which brings a lot of benefit when writing DSLs and macros.

(Python doesn't have the ';', but its whitespace is ambiguous, so that's not a fair comparison.)

Sane people don't write lisp using Notepad.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#27

Post by comfypotato »

wrycoder wrote: post #26
nerdponx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think S-expressions are fundamentally too difficult to work with, without good editor support, to make Lisp anything other than a niche power tool for the highly motivated. I love CL, Scheme, Clojure, Janet, Fennel, etc. but I don't blame anyone for finding them inaccessible. I think Python, JavaScript, and Go have caught on for somewhat similar reasons, compared to Java and C#: they are easier to get started with,…

But, you always have good editor support. Lisp/Scheme has traditionally been coded using Emacs or its equivalent. With that support, the parens seem to disappear after you've been writing lisp for awhile. Beginner lispy languages come with a suitable beginner IDE, e.g. Racket or Logo. A typical lisp statement has a leading '(' and a trailing ')', which replaces the ';' in Algol-like languages. So, one additional char…

I think the parent comment is alluding to the notion that the very entry level programmer enjoys being able to use notepad. That is to say the initial barrier of eMacs is just too much. Obviously worth it in the long run though.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#28

Post by [deleted] »

nerdponx wrote: post #20
comfypotato wrote: post #4

He certainly implies that he thinks Common Lisp (and maybe Dylan) would have been as popular as Java is today if the lottery had played out differently. I wonder if anyone else feels this way. The programming world would be a different place. I can’t help but fantasize about how incredible eMacs would be by now if that had been the case. (Not that it isn’t already incredible.)

I think S-expressions are fundamentally too difficult to work with, without good editor support, to make Lisp anything other than a niche power tool for the highly motivated. I love CL, Scheme, Clojure, Janet, Fennel, etc. but I don't blame anyone for finding them inaccessible. I think Python, JavaScript, and Go have caught on for somewhat similar reasons, compared to Java and C#: they are easier to get started with,…

[deleted]

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#29

Post by bmitc »

nerdponx wrote: post #20
comfypotato wrote: post #4

He certainly implies that he thinks Common Lisp (and maybe Dylan) would have been as popular as Java is today if the lottery had played out differently. I wonder if anyone else feels this way. The programming world would be a different place. I can’t help but fantasize about how incredible eMacs would be by now if that had been the case. (Not that it isn’t already incredible.)

I think S-expressions are fundamentally too difficult to work with, without good editor support, to make Lisp anything other than a niche power tool for the highly motivated. I love CL, Scheme, Clojure, Janet, Fennel, etc. but I don't blame anyone for finding them inaccessible. I think Python, JavaScript, and Go have caught on for somewhat similar reasons, compared to Java and C#: they are easier to get started with,…

I have never really understood people‘s aversion to parentheses. Many languages require them in ad-hoc ways to groups expressions. For S-expressions, you give up some mild convenience and looks for extremely consistent semantics.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#30

Post by taeric »

dleslie wrote: post #5
lisper wrote: post #2

"What I came to understand, after years of work on Common Lisp and the death of Dylan, the ongoing popularity of the hideous C++, and the rise of Java, is that programming languages don't become mainstream based on their elegance or their deep utility. ... [T]he best languages very rarely take over, if ever. Some language starts being used because it has the backing of some big company or project, people doing simila…

He's overlooking an incredibly important factor: Java and C++ had capable, even enterprise quality free compilers at a time when Common Lisp environments were typically either hideously expensive or poorly supported or both. You could grab Sun's JDK for free, or GCC, or (later) Visual Studio Express at a time when the best options for Common Lisp were thousands of dollars per seat, or barely working on x86 (CMUCL did…

I think that is just a facet of his point. It was Sun's corporate backing and muscle that enabled you to get their SDK for free. And this is ignoring the reach out into education markets to get Java as the 101 level course for an absurd number of students.
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