due to a shortage of parentheses in cambridge?
apologies to SKB.
Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
331–339 of 339 posts
Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with this counterfactual, much as I love Scheme among languages I've barely used in my career. Chez Scheme was fast but would not fit in the browser especially on Windows 3.1, which still had the largest share when I started JS in 1995, if memory serves -- it was certainly important to Netscape because Microsoft started bundling IE into later Windows versions, as default browser in Windows 98. Petit Che…
I guess I'll start by saying that JS is my absolute favorite among all the top languages out there (StandardML, Rust, Scheme, and CL probably being the others in my top 5). Thanks for making it! Of course, everything said is hypothetical as we can't actually wind back the clock. You could have rolled your own Scheme instead of adopting a then-fast implementation. The Scheme would certainly have been faster from the v…
> JS is my absolute favorite
One more true believer:
>> trueJSBelievers = 100000000
100000000
>> trueJSBelievers += true
100000001Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ruby is "perl-esque" in syntax, and of course TIMTOWTDI is opposite to the 13th item of the Zen of Python, so it's understandable some dislike to an express design decision. But hate ? Really?
> But hate? Really? Coding with Python makes me feel like I'm hand-washing dishes that have been dirtied and left in the sink for several days. I know that many like Python, and I'm not arguing against that in any way. Whatever floats your boat, mang. However, trying to tell me why I "ought to like" Python is like telling me why I "ought to like" cilantro. I know you think it's delicious. To me it smells like squashe…
The dish soap thing is genetic if you didn’t know. The majority of the world doesn’t taste the dish soap.
Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't see mentioned in the thread (maybe missed it) the #1 reason, IMO, that Lisp can't be popular in companies. Everyone should take the time to learn Lisp and do a handful of personal projects with it. It'll help your growth as a software engineer. Just do it! But that doesn't make it a great corporate language. Lips is infinitely flexible, you can mutate it to be what you want. That's cool and feels awesome. Al…
> The anti-Lisp is something like Go. Simple, not very flexible, everyone does it the same way mostly, you can plug & play developers like scrum demands we do. This has not been my experience with Go. The only areas where Go actually enforces consistency is that gofmt has no configuration surface, and Go Modules conclusively won the dependency management war. Other than that, it's still a lawless wasteland. Foreword:…
I needed this. Thank you.
Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#335Earlier 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.…
But this was a super easy sequence.
Can you give an example how it should be written?
Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with this counterfactual, much as I love Scheme among languages I've barely used in my career. Chez Scheme was fast but would not fit in the browser especially on Windows 3.1, which still had the largest share when I started JS in 1995, if memory serves -- it was certainly important to Netscape because Microsoft started bundling IE into later Windows versions, as default browser in Windows 98. Petit Che…
I guess I'll start by saying that JS is my absolute favorite among all the top languages out there (StandardML, Rust, Scheme, and CL probably being the others in my top 5). Thanks for making it! Of course, everything said is hypothetical as we can't actually wind back the clock. You could have rolled your own Scheme instead of adopting a then-fast implementation. The Scheme would certainly have been faster from the v…
It's fun to argue what-if's, up to a point. But I see a couple of factual problems:
1. JS via asm.js paved the way for WebAssembly, and asm.js (https://asmjs.org/) like Wasm is statically typed. Scheme is dynamic. So there would have to be an asm.scm or similar evolutionary path, in order to get to something like Wasm even if in addition to Scheme rather than JS, for the needed win.
Polymorphic inline caching etc. is not enough to compete with native, e.g., to run Unreal Engine 5:
https://x.com/spatialweeb/status/1757581115609817236
Static typing matters beyond raw CPU perf, in order to prove memory safety with definite allocation -- no touching the GC or 30fps gameplay falls over.
2. Wasm is binary, and this matters too: while transport compression helps JS on the wire, or under the alternative, would help Scheme on the wire, the memory cost (plus CPU of LZ) blowing out the compressed payload into source form for parsing is too much for mobile, or for any head to head competition with the likes of PNaCl (which ~2012 era Google was flogging in vain -- no way it would get into Safari or other browsers).
Yes, binary syntaxes for Lisps exist, but it's not the case that everything can be done "with just lisp".
Please use factual yardsticks and apples-to-apples even for counterfactuals that would have to survive in the same ecosystem.
Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with this counterfactual, much as I love Scheme among languages I've barely used in my career. Chez Scheme was fast but would not fit in the browser especially on Windows 3.1, which still had the largest share when I started JS in 1995, if memory serves -- it was certainly important to Netscape because Microsoft started bundling IE into later Windows versions, as default browser in Windows 98. Petit Che…
I guess I'll start by saying that JS is my absolute favorite among all the top languages out there (StandardML, Rust, Scheme, and CL probably being the others in my top 5). Thanks for making it! Of course, everything said is hypothetical as we can't actually wind back the clock. You could have rolled your own Scheme instead of adopting a then-fast implementation. The Scheme would certainly have been faster from the v…
> integers are faster than floats
Bignums are not faster in general and more work, but yeah: optimizing float (or bignum) to machine int is a win. This was one of the first type specializations done in the JS JIT wars of 2008.
Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't written Lisp professionally, but my impression is that one place Lisp comes short is forcing convention: Every program, every module, is potentially its own DSL, so good luck getting programmers to agree on a convention. At least with more rigid languages like Java or Rust, when you open a file, you'll agree what language it is. Haskell has this problem, too. You need things like "Boring Haskell Manifesto"…
> Every program, every module, is potentially its own DSL it isn't, don't worry. Problem solved ;)
I'm not using Lisp in production, so no problem to begin with. :-D
Re: Why is Common Lisp not the most popular programming language?
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
I particularly remember an extended rant that Lisp == Common Lisp, and Scheme is not Common Lisp, and therefore Scheme is not Lisp. I’m oversimplifying—Erik gave specific reasons—but that’s what it amounted to. Derailed an entire conversation, IIRC.
I think I remember that one, it was something about a Lisp being a Lisp-2 by definition. I shook my head in disagreement at the time, and still do.
Heh. Yeah, that was part of it.