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Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

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Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#131

Post by harry8 »

richardgreeko27 wrote: post #101
harry8 wrote: post #74

You want to learn programming. Lets get started - how long does that take to bang out 10 exercises? Order the estimated results from quickest to slowest. Here's my estimates (don't like them, show yours! It'll be interesting): - Scratch - python/perl/ruby/javascript - C/Java - Swift/Rust - Anything else running on the jvm - - a whole lot of daylight - - common lisp. And many if not most will fail to get to the first…

I think had I started with a lisp dialect like Racket and the book The Little Schemer, the speed of getting through those first exercises may have been just as fast or faster than the Ruby and JavaScript I started with. Lisps are hard to switch to but I disagree that they're hard to start with.

Scheme is not common lisp.

But you know where you place it on the list. I did sicp w/ racket, a 10 y.o. I know tried simply scheme w/ racket. I'd put it next to anything on the jvm (including clojure) myself. The 10 y.o. puts it way behind python & swift.

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#132

Post by samatman »

jjav wrote: post #102
murderfs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely easier to parse programatically, but IMO it's a nightmare to read as a human. e.g. compare these expressions: (x+y)^2 = x^2 + 2xy + y^2 x y + 2 ^ = x 2 ^ 2 x y * * y 2 ^ + + I find it nearly impossible to parse this without actually maintaining the stack in my mind.

> I find it nearly impossible to parse this without actually maintaining the stack in my mind. You don't write out RPN in a long sequence like that. I'm a devoted RPN advocate and seeing "x y + 2 ^ = x 2 ^ 2 x y * * y 2 ^ + +" is indeed difficult to parse. But that's not at all how you use RPN. You compute the problem going from smaller units to larger units getting intermediate results as you go and combining them.…

I'm convinced a large part of the benefit people see from RPN calculators is that you have to figure out the order of operations before you start. It forces a way of thinking about the equation which is less error-prone, you're more likely to notice mistakes as well.

Takes a little getting used to, but the interesting thing is that analyzing an equation for the proper order of operations on an RPN calculator is not at all an error-prone process. It's a careful process, and it forces an understanding of the equation itself which just churning through it on an infix calculator does not.

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#133

Post by CodeWriter23 »

samatman wrote: post #7

It's the lists. No, not the prefix notation, parenthesis, what have you, although that doesn't help. The lists themselves. In Lisp, code is data, and data is lists. Yes, of course, there are hashmaps, arrays, strings. But idiomatic Lisp code really does use linked lists extensively, it's an entire style of programming. Even if you'd prefer to use different data structures (and again, Common Lisp does support this ),…

+1 for writing “processing lists” with a lisp

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#134

Post by derp38726 »

zoogeny wrote: post #90

I admit that I haven't touched CL in decades and my most recent exposure to Lisp-ish stuff is writing a bit of Scheme and reading a bit of Clojure (maybe some elisp too). I like a lot of the ideas behind Lisp-like languages but I dislike writing in them. Parenthesis, as others mention, start to get unwieldy. I often feel like I'm expressing myself "in reverse", almost like I'm programming in Yoda speak. I mean by tha…

>Perhaps it doesn't occur to them that people try it out and then leave and never come back.

Once the code is data is code clicks there’s no going back. When you read other languages you just see a lisp DSL, you can’t unsee it because you’ve changed.

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#135

Post by dadoum »

harry8 wrote: post #74

You want to learn programming. Lets get started - how long does that take to bang out 10 exercises? Order the estimated results from quickest to slowest. Here's my estimates (don't like them, show yours! It'll be interesting): - Scratch - python/perl/ruby/javascript - C/Java - Swift/Rust - Anything else running on the jvm - - a whole lot of daylight - - common lisp. And many if not most will fail to get to the first…

I am curious about the reason you put Swift so low in the list. Like to me it's as easy to output a program in Swift as it is to make one in JavaScript. (except if you count compile times, last time I used it I already thought they were way too slow)

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#137

Post by samatman »

dmz73 wrote: post #119
linguae wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust requires people to learn how to adapt to Rust’s borrow checker, which can be challenging for programmers coming from other languages, yet this hasn’t stopped Rust’s rapid adoption in systems programming. In fact, Rust’s safety features are Rust’s selling point. Of course, it helps that Rust came from Mozilla and that it’s used in Firefox. Other than Grammarly and some internal Google products, I don’t know any m…

I find that borrow checked in Rust is the easiest part of the language to get used to. Lifetimes on the other hand seem unnecessary in 99% cases where compiler forces you to use them - why can't it just assume that all the required parts have the 'a and complain if something violates that? Event bigger issue is all the missing features that most other languages have - overloaded functions (they kind of exist in gener…

> Lifetimes on the other hand seem unnecessary in 99% cases where compiler forces you to use them - why can't it just assume that all the required parts have the 'a and complain if something violates that?

Rust does that, this is lifetime elision. If the compiler complains about missing lifetime annotations, that means it can't infer the lifetime. Granted that it not-infrequently feels like it should be able to, and there's definitely room for improvement on its lifetime inference. It's conservative, meaning that an elided lifetime will always be valid, but some lifetimes which could be elided get missed by inference and need to be added anyway.

But most of the times that I've yelled at the compiler for complaining about missing lifetimes, it was right and I was wrong.

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#138

Post by EdwardDiego »

Another aspect that perhaps has changed in the years since - when I was playing with Common List many moons ago, the community in comp.lang.lisp was the place to go, but also rather easy to bounce off. I mean, amusing flames, but yeah, asking a genuine question, the fucking manual read beforehand to ensure not already answered in Hyperspec, often led to rather unpleasant replies. Erik Naggum was particularly abrasive.

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#139

Post by samatman »

tmtvl wrote: post #97
tcmart14 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the biggest problem I have with LISP which is why I think a lot of it is historical to some degree. I do like LISP to dabble in, but yea, there are tons of different dialects, it makes it harder to approach. Because while there is 'Common' LISP, there are implementations that can vary slightly between compilers, which compiler do you use? And some of the more popular compilers are sort of dead? There is SBCL,…

> There is SBCL, which does get some development, but not much I think? Quoth the website*: > New SBCL versions are usually released at the end of each month Also, the only BSD which has even in the single digits of market share, Darwin, is only 1 point release behind. * https://sbcl.org/all-news.html >

Half of the phones in the US run BSD. Good luck getting SBCL on it though.

Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?

#140

Post by habibur »

samatman wrote: post #7

It's the lists. No, not the prefix notation, parenthesis, what have you, although that doesn't help. The lists themselves. In Lisp, code is data, and data is lists. Yes, of course, there are hashmaps, arrays, strings. But idiomatic Lisp code really does use linked lists extensively, it's an entire style of programming. Even if you'd prefer to use different data structures (and again, Common Lisp does support this ),…

It's vector and hashmap that you need most, not linked list.
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