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I still Lisp (2021)

betterprogramming.pub

31–40 of 119 posts

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for Emacs users I'm sure Clojure is great. For the other 99% of us who use VS Code or IntelliJ or something else entirely, it really isn't. Though IntelliJ + Cursive I'd say is probably the best, it still pales in comparison to say Rust or TypeScript support in editors.

I've found Calva for VS Code to be excellent, what do you think is missing there?

I tried Calva a lot and suggested it to my coworkers a while back (2017ish) and it was nothing but trouble. Cursive seemed to work pretty well, though.

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#32
post #5
post #2

I have a suspicion that outside of the 10 people writing lisp seriously—shirakumo, stylewarning, lispm, and some others— there’s more characters of prose praising lisp being written than lisp being written. It’s a great language. I really like it and am using it for some projects. I just want people to actually use it rather than talking about using it. Edit: I’m wrong in the present case! Author has some cool projec…

Where would you recommend one starts? With Racket?

Look at the two files in Kandria: ai.lisp, water.lisp.

File through the Elite source code. Do tut.txt in Arc.

Picture ten billion things and ChatGPT-X, Lisp interacting.

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisp is a research language that lucked into great syntax by accident. I use it all the time to help me think through a problem and then implement it in something brain dead like rust so the average programmer can follow along. From the outside my code bases look 0% lisp, from the inside they are 100% lisp with build artifacts in other languages.

> I use it all the time to help me think through a problem and then implement it in something brain dead like rust so the average programmer can follow along. Is Rust brain dead language anyone can follow along? Did you mean python? > From the outside my code bases look 0% lisp, from the inside they are 100% lisp with build artifacts in other languages. Can you expand on that? You generate code of other language than…

No Rust, warmed over ideas form 40 years ago are just hard enough to make mediocrsties think they are cutting edge.

>Can you expand on that? You generate code of other language than lisp in lisp?

I write the real program in lisp in two weeks then translate it to a brain dead language over a few months so the average developer contribute to the code base.

It's rather impossible to get people used to algol descendants to think about complex programs. It's rather like explaining color to the bilnd.

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#34
post #21
post #2

I have a suspicion that outside of the 10 people writing lisp seriously—shirakumo, stylewarning, lispm, and some others— there’s more characters of prose praising lisp being written than lisp being written. It’s a great language. I really like it and am using it for some projects. I just want people to actually use it rather than talking about using it. Edit: I’m wrong in the present case! Author has some cool projec…

I feel like there may be more Emacs Lisp being written recently than other Lisps and prose about Lisp combined.

which is a terrible shame and a lesson. of the 10 or so lisp like languages i've used extensively, elisp is by far the worst. it succeeds because it interfaces with something important, and its carried along everywhere.

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#35
post #21
post #2

I have a suspicion that outside of the 10 people writing lisp seriously—shirakumo, stylewarning, lispm, and some others— there’s more characters of prose praising lisp being written than lisp being written. It’s a great language. I really like it and am using it for some projects. I just want people to actually use it rather than talking about using it. Edit: I’m wrong in the present case! Author has some cool projec…

I feel like there may be more Emacs Lisp being written recently than other Lisps and prose about Lisp combined.

> more Emacs Lisp being written recently

Do you mean since hitting rock bottom in June 2021?

https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&plat...

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use it all the time to help me think through a problem and then implement it in something brain dead like rust so the average programmer can follow along. Is Rust brain dead language anyone can follow along? Did you mean python? > From the outside my code bases look 0% lisp, from the inside they are 100% lisp with build artifacts in other languages. Can you expand on that? You generate code of other language than…

No Rust, warmed over ideas form 40 years ago are just hard enough to make mediocrsties think they are cutting edge. >Can you expand on that? You generate code of other language than lisp in lisp? I write the real program in lisp in two weeks then translate it to a brain dead language over a few months so the average developer contribute to the code base. It's rather impossible to get people used to algol descendants…

I code in assembly in my mind. I just translate it to Lisp so others can understand it.

(sarcasm over)

If Lisp is so amazing, why does it not get more followers?

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#37
post #2

I have a suspicion that outside of the 10 people writing lisp seriously—shirakumo, stylewarning, lispm, and some others— there’s more characters of prose praising lisp being written than lisp being written. It’s a great language. I really like it and am using it for some projects. I just want people to actually use it rather than talking about using it. Edit: I’m wrong in the present case! Author has some cool projec…

Somewhat to my surprise, I ended up writing some script-fu lisp when I couldn't get python-fu to do what I wanted in GIMP. I believe it got some use seven or eight years ago at work for batch resizing of images.

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#38
post #15
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I've done a lot of Lisp, for money, and for open source platform&community buildout.) HN articles about exotic things, not just Lisp, do seem to get upvoted disproportionately. Also, PG declared Lisp as something you're supposed to think is important or a superpower, and I've wondered whether that also contributes to some upvotes on HN. But I'm not aware that a single one of the bajillion YC startups used Lisp. Mayb…

reddit. they switched to python for various reasons.

They’re switching to golang now for other various reasons

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#39
Lisp feels more creative. You can bend the language, it's malleable. Rust may be the new Engineer's best friend but to me, Lisp remains the tool for the artist. Use Rust to Do It Right. Use Lisp to have fun.

Re: I still Lisp (2021)

#40
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there may be more Emacs Lisp being written recently than other Lisps and prose about Lisp combined.

which is a terrible shame and a lesson. of the 10 or so lisp like languages i've used extensively, elisp is by far the worst. it succeeds because it interfaces with something important, and its carried along everywhere.

I agree, but I'm grateful that it exists.

After much searching for the perfect languages and perfect tools (while using emacs as a simple text editor), it finally dawned on me that Emacs itself is as close as I'd get to a lisp machine right here in my own back yard. A lisp machine that sits quite nicely on top of linux/unix and plays very nicely with it.

There's much that I love about the lisp world, and the author does a great job of articulating the reasons why. There's also much that I love about the unix philosophy. Emacs is a bridge between these two worlds that I love, and I'm old enough now not to give a shit (or need to give a shit) what the rest of the world is doing. This is home.

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