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The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

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Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#111

Post by pjmlp »

spicybright wrote: post #47
bmitc wrote: post #34

Was Lisp actually ever risen at JPL, or was it just used on these handful of projects by a single or small group of developers? > At one point an attempt was made to port one part of the system (the planner) to C++. This attempt had to be abandoned after a year. Based on this experience I think it's safe to say that if not for Lisp the Remote Agent would have failed. I like Lisp and am certainly no fan of the complex…

I'm going to straw man a bit, but it feels like lisp enthusiasts are desperate to find stories of commercial software being written in lisp. I'm sure there's many examples I haven't heard of that are legitimate (using lisp for almost all of a specific domain at scale and having a mature codebase, tho that's arguable) but I've yet to see any example that has meat on it's bones, besides the company that did crash bandi…

Siscog in Portugal, most of their software used to be Lisp based even if not listed on the careers section.

https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/

They were even sponsors on 2022 European Lisp Symposium.

https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/news/siscog-sponsors-the-2022-eu...

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#112

Post by pjmlp »

HexDecOctBin wrote: post #73
spicybright wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to straw man a bit, but it feels like lisp enthusiasts are desperate to find stories of commercial software being written in lisp. I'm sure there's many examples I haven't heard of that are legitimate (using lisp for almost all of a specific domain at scale and having a mature codebase, tho that's arguable) but I've yet to see any example that has meat on it's bones, besides the company that did crash bandi…

> besides the company that did crash bandicoot on the PS1. And even that one I'm unsure of as I feel it's been mythologized with how often it's pointed to. Well, good instincts, because it wasn't. Naughty Dog used Lisp to write a compiler for an s-expression based C-like language called GOAL (it was kind of a macro-assembler with a register allocator). The reason for using s-expressions was to get a syntactic macro s…

Lisps are more than just tracing GC and list processing.

There are implementations with other forms of memory management, and they have long supported other kinds of datastructures.

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#113

Post by ngcc_hk »

dTal wrote: post #55
toss1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup Except that it is only local or small risk minimization; the catastrophic existential risks end up maximized to the point of becoming inevitable. With companies, the MBAs happily optimize away anything that isn't immediate revenue. So manufacturing gets offshored, along with all the deep knowledge of how to make things. R&D gets shrunk and minimized because it is a quarterly expense with returns not immediately s…

>...all that know-how was stolen by China, who isn't interested in quarterly profits, but in global hegemony... This seems a little simplistic? "China" isn't a monolith, and I'm pretty sure Chinese companies are just as interested in quarterly profits as Western ones. It's not like they're all state enterprises. And they didn't "steal" know-how - they earned it, by doing stuff (aside from the odd case of corporate es…

You do not need the whole china to do it. And you do not need the majority even. Just some and then recreate from parts to WeChat to TikTok … and it is one way street as well as not many steal anything back.

I still think the west is doomed. But both hk and Ukraine is a wake-up call. When they act very badly can you fight back or just be German. Too many dependence …

Good luck. You need it. We all need it. As only left thing is luck. I hope not. But your response …

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#114

Post by ngcc_hk »

somenameforme wrote: post #106
ghaff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty inherent in those types of projects. How long do big aerospace projects take? (And then they may be canceled when some other bidder wins the deal.) Big hardware development has probably accelerated some overall--the development of new chip architectures and "big iron" computer systems was at least multiple years when I was a product manager, but especially safety critical systems or things you get one sho…

SpaceX is currently set to revolutionize the entire space industry (again) with Starship. The abstract idea of Starship was only first presented at a conference in 2017. By 2020 they had developed and were doing individual component flight tests. They just had their first fully fueled test of the entire integrated system yesterday. Assuming they keep at pace, there will imminently be a static fire and it will be head…

Heard that here (?) how a senator insisted a project on reusing the components of an old programme and then become the administrator of that project. Hence overall you can say we have 40 years idea for the new moon landing project. Great for retirement.

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#116

Post by dTal »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #91
dTal wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...all that know-how was stolen by China, who isn't interested in quarterly profits, but in global hegemony... This seems a little simplistic? "China" isn't a monolith, and I'm pretty sure Chinese companies are just as interested in quarterly profits as Western ones. It's not like they're all state enterprises. And they didn't "steal" know-how - they earned it, by doing stuff (aside from the odd case of corporate es…

> Nor is the United States any less interested in global hegemony than China. In as far as United States is a democracy, it is not interested in global "hegemony". It is interested in Democracy spreading all over the world. Democracy is not hegemony but freedom for one person to have one vote and nobody being above the law. Of course that could change. A Nazi party could gain the power in US. Then you could say that…

The US maintains the largest military in the world, despite the mainland being virtually unassailable by virtue of geography, and has overthrown numerous democratically elected governments while leaving brutal and regressive regimes intact. American financial interests are a much better predictor of foreign policy than "spreading democracy". As for nobody being above the law, that isn't even true in the US itself, never mind its satellite states.

Politicians love to assert as you do, but I'm afraid actions speak louder than words.

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#117

Post by chadcmulligan »

travisgriggs wrote: post #9

> The management world has tried to develop software engineering processes that allow people to be plugged into them like interchangeable components. I've wondered about this a lot lately. It's not limited to software engineering only, you see it in other creative/human domains as well. Media production. Teaching. So on. But it's made me wonder, why doesn't the equation ever invert: "The world has tried to develop _m…

I've often thought the same. I've recently been reading "Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World" it's not only the history of the factory but the history of Labour with relation to capital and industry, I'm only up to Henry Ford at the moment, but it's a good read and puts these questions in a different light. In short its the money, these systems are designed to minimise risk, worker happiness is not a priority, any conditions are only gained by worker actions of some sort.

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#118

Post by didericis »

lisper wrote: post #107
didericis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This perfectly illustrates the problem. “Blessed self appointed teachers” should not and cannot exist in any functional actually meritocratic system. In order for mass civic education to be effective there needs to be a core set of criteria for what constitutes a good teacher and a good citizen that all parties negotiate on and largely agree on (to the extent possible) that’s actually (not just superficially) bottom…

> That is incredibly difficult to achieve, and impossible to fully realize. But that should be the aim. I agree. Can you please put some contact info in your profile and/or contact me off line? I would love to discuss this with you further if you're interested.

I'm flattered by the outreach, thank you. I just update my profile.

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#119

Post by HexDecOctBin »

pjmlp wrote: post #112
HexDecOctBin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> besides the company that did crash bandicoot on the PS1. And even that one I'm unsure of as I feel it's been mythologized with how often it's pointed to. Well, good instincts, because it wasn't. Naughty Dog used Lisp to write a compiler for an s-expression based C-like language called GOAL (it was kind of a macro-assembler with a register allocator). The reason for using s-expressions was to get a syntactic macro s…

Lisps are more than just tracing GC and list processing. There are implementations with other forms of memory management, and they have long supported other kinds of datastructures.

What would be the defining characteristics of Lisps, that separate them from other languages? Surely it can't be simply s-exps, since that is pretty much all GOAL and Lisps share. Would a C written in the form of s-exps qualify as a Lisp?

Re: The rise and fall of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab (2002)

#120

Post by didericis »

beefield wrote: post #104
didericis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This perfectly illustrates the problem. “Blessed self appointed teachers” should not and cannot exist in any functional actually meritocratic system. In order for mass civic education to be effective there needs to be a core set of criteria for what constitutes a good teacher and a good citizen that all parties negotiate on and largely agree on (to the extent possible) that’s actually (not just superficially) bottom…

> That is incredibly difficult to achieve, and impossible to fully realize. But that should be the aim. What makes you confident that not fully realized version of your utopia does not end up being a dystopia? For reference, see what happened for the not fully realized utopia of communism in Soviet Union

Every functional organization throughout history has been some form of meritocratic system. Functional does not guarantee benevolence/a meritocratic system is neither utopian nor dystopian in and of itself, but some attempt at meritocracy is a prerequisite to being able to aim a system at all and keep it from causing harm through dysfunction.

Whether or not more local emphasis is better when talking about civic education is a much longer conversation. Determining what proper civic education should be is an extremely difficult balancing act. That difficulty and the long term ramifications of education is why I think it's likely to be THE most important problem in upcoming decades. In order to avoid dystopian outcomes that difficulty needs to be confronted honestly and pragmatically. Systems become most dysfunctional and dystopian when they pursue a vision without regard for pragmatic considerations and are willing to become increasingly "in debt" to a vision by doing things that are very bad in the short term to medium term for an imagined, non existent benefit in the long term. I think it's perfectly possible to aim a system in pragmatic directions towards actually viable paths to betterment which balance short, medium, and long term considerations without the type of indebtedness to vision that leads to bad outcomes. Those paths won't be perfectly defined, and the benefits might end up being modest. In short I don't think I'm advocating for anything utopian, just intentional, pragmatic, and in service of whatever best paths make themselves visible. I think we are not looking at paths which are much better than the one public education is currently on. Exactly how much better civic education could be is a big unknown, but my hope is that it could be drastically improved.

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