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Common Lisp: 2022 in review

lisp-journey.gitlab.io

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Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#41

Post by TurboHaskal »

smcn wrote: post #13
galdor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about Common Lisp in the places I worked for in the past has always be met with mockery and disdain. But then again, I have seen this kind of reaction for every non-mainstream language, so it is not really surprising. I'm currently getting back to CL, hoping to do much more with it for 2023. Being able to develop incrementally in SLIME has been a joy. Hopefully I will manage to find the right project idea to…

I was /that guy/ at my last place and I agree that it's not well received. Though once I was writing some lisp to fix a problem we were having and I had a developer beside me and he was blown away by what was happening. I think that the interactivity is something which must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I use it at my current start up and could not imagine using another language. I've become too used to thi…

Unfortunately the average developer is alienated beyond repair. A significant % of developers make a living working on tools to address the lack of interactivity and poor feedback loop of mainstream languages, and actual interactivity is touted as a bad practice by the TDD fundamentalists.

edit: My advice to young and overly curious developers: never talk about weird languages at work. I don’t know what’s with it but you’ll trigger a visceral and almost violent reaction from the average developer who thinks their livelihood is in danger. It’s just not worth it. And no this isn’t fixed with joining a FAANG.

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#42

Post by aidenn0 »

smcn wrote: post #13
galdor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about Common Lisp in the places I worked for in the past has always be met with mockery and disdain. But then again, I have seen this kind of reaction for every non-mainstream language, so it is not really surprising. I'm currently getting back to CL, hoping to do much more with it for 2023. Being able to develop incrementally in SLIME has been a joy. Hopefully I will manage to find the right project idea to…

I was /that guy/ at my last place and I agree that it's not well received. Though once I was writing some lisp to fix a problem we were having and I had a developer beside me and he was blown away by what was happening. I think that the interactivity is something which must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I use it at my current start up and could not imagine using another language. I've become too used to thi…

> Though once I was writing some lisp to fix a problem we were having and I had a developer beside me and he was blown away by what was happening. I think that the interactivity is something which must be experienced to be fully appreciated.

Indeed, I had a similar experience. When quick iteration is helpful it shines.

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#43

Post by dgan »

rchtwlm wrote: post #25
dgan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea, but JVM is a show stopper for me :/

Why? I have no particular feelings for or against the JVM. It always surprises me when people get so passionate about runtimes - how much do you interact with them? They're just in the background doing their thing. I can see reasons for not wanting to use the JVM in specific cases. For example, it may not have the performance you want for the application you're developing. I'm just confounded by general statements su…

Why => because JVM is poor no fit for CLI, and is a poor fit for games. Those two fields in which I see myself using common-lisp.

Unsure what's so wierd about it, everyone (most) knows about slow cold startup times, and inability to control memory layout in JVM. Also, horrible C bindings

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#44

Post by dgan »

smcl wrote: post #24
dgan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea, but JVM is a show stopper for me :/

May I ask why? I've no dog in this fight (I don't work with Java) but I've seen plenty of people against Java the language who were very happy to use Scala or Clojure. I haven't encountered anyone who has specifically said they were against the JVM , so I'm interested whether it's something technical (maybe you do more real-time or work with resource-constrained systems) or if it's something more personal. There are…

Copy pasted: Why => because JVM is poor no fit for CLI, and is a poor fit for games. Those two fields in which I see myself using common-lisp.

Unsure what's so wierd about it, everyone (most) knows about slow cold startup times, and inability to control memory layout in JVM. Also, horrible C bindings

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#45

Post by qart »

smcn wrote: post #13
galdor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about Common Lisp in the places I worked for in the past has always be met with mockery and disdain. But then again, I have seen this kind of reaction for every non-mainstream language, so it is not really surprising. I'm currently getting back to CL, hoping to do much more with it for 2023. Being able to develop incrementally in SLIME has been a joy. Hopefully I will manage to find the right project idea to…

I was /that guy/ at my last place and I agree that it's not well received. Though once I was writing some lisp to fix a problem we were having and I had a developer beside me and he was blown away by what was happening. I think that the interactivity is something which must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I use it at my current start up and could not imagine using another language. I've become too used to thi…

> he was blown away by what was happening

Could you recommend some videos of live development with CL that aren't for toy examples? I don't know any lisp, but I'd like to see how different it is from other semi-interactive programming languages like Matlab, Python, etc.

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#46

Post by sph »

noloblo wrote: post #29
smcn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was /that guy/ at my last place and I agree that it's not well received. Though once I was writing some lisp to fix a problem we were having and I had a developer beside me and he was blown away by what was happening. I think that the interactivity is something which must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I use it at my current start up and could not imagine using another language. I've become too used to thi…

What is the interactivity that must be experienced to fully appreciate

A short video is more than a thousand words:

https://youtu.be/tmKrF-QAcOk

For a longer visual introduction, I have been enjoying kaveh808's videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTA6M4yZF0MzsMlNL0N67tIU1...

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#47

Post by smcn »

qart wrote: post #45
smcn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was /that guy/ at my last place and I agree that it's not well received. Though once I was writing some lisp to fix a problem we were having and I had a developer beside me and he was blown away by what was happening. I think that the interactivity is something which must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I use it at my current start up and could not imagine using another language. I've become too used to thi…

> he was blown away by what was happening Could you recommend some videos of live development with CL that aren't for toy examples? I don't know any lisp, but I'd like to see how different it is from other semi-interactive programming languages like Matlab, Python, etc.

I'll be honest and say that I don't watch people write lisp so I'm unsure of the current landscape. I remember Baggers being the guy[0]. That may be interesting to you. Recently I've watched a video or two of Josh Betts[1] and while his shirtlessness is confusing, he's pretty good.

0: https://youtube.com/@CBaggers

1: https://youtube.com/@joshbetts1022

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#48

Post by sph »

dgan wrote: post #7

Disclaimer: not a big Lisp user. Interesting how Lisp code is NOT littered with " if something != null, ...", unlike your average Java project (or even python, but it's less visible), and just works. My understanding is that busines-as-usual handling of nil (empty lists) implicitely confers to Lisp code monadic style which help to avoid tedious checks

Agreed. After 16 years of programming experience, I've somehow settled into a world where error handling is no big deal in my software:

- Let-it-crash philosophy of Erlang/Elixir

- Monadic errors of Rust

- Conditions/restarts/REPL model of Common Lisp

Using Go (or C or Python or anything with exceptions) feels like going back to the 1970s.

Re: Common Lisp: 2022 in review

#49

Post by User23 »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #41
smcn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was /that guy/ at my last place and I agree that it's not well received. Though once I was writing some lisp to fix a problem we were having and I had a developer beside me and he was blown away by what was happening. I think that the interactivity is something which must be experienced to be fully appreciated. I use it at my current start up and could not imagine using another language. I've become too used to thi…

Unfortunately the average developer is alienated beyond repair. A significant % of developers make a living working on tools to address the lack of interactivity and poor feedback loop of mainstream languages, and actual interactivity is touted as a bad practice by the TDD fundamentalists. edit: My advice to young and overly curious developers: never talk about weird languages at work. I don’t know what’s with it but…

> and actual interactivity is touted as a bad practice by the TDD fundamentalists

That’s funny, because what drew me to doing TDD in Java was how much I could treat the test runner like sending the current form to the REPL in SLIME.

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