71–80 of 80 posts
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In that case wouldn't you write some components in C and glue it all together with something like ruby?
Sure, that sounds reasonable. But you've still chosen C to talk to the hardware.
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I'm not a Clojure expert, so I can't directly address that, but from the little that I know of Clojure though, I think you can do that by binding a function to a var, and then changing the binding of the var. (Can any Clojure experts exlaborate?) Regardless, every Lisp that I am able to comment on (newLISP, elisp, Scheme, CL) can do that easily, so I doubt that Clojure would have difficulty with this.
It does have difficulty with this, check the mailing list. Just because something using s-expressions doesn't mean you can override functions in a namespace. http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/... ;
The only reason to write in a language like C or Java today (over Python) is speed. And there are a very limited number of applications that require that sort of speed. There's no question that Linux should be written in a low level language, or a high-performance chess bot. But I'm incredulous when I see anyone write a website in even the relatively high-level Java. So, the author is right that we're getting more Py…
"There's no question that Linux should be written in a low level language" In the early days, the fact Unix was written in C was quite remarkable. At that time, OSs were written in hand-optimized assembly language. I see no reason to stay with C-level languages (C was once called high-level) if we can make compilers that translate them into machine code that's faster than hand-optimized assembly. Smalltalk/80 and the…
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The only reason to write in a language like C or Java today (over Python) is speed. And there are a very limited number of applications that require that sort of speed You probably mean a very limited number of web app frontend code. That may be true. But I think you underestimate what is being done with software. With a language that is 200 times slower than C or Java you can't do any data analysis, graphics or imag…
Can we at least all agree that no one should be writing anything in a shell scripting language any longer? I'd be happy with just winning that battle.
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Oh, come on, folks. It's a perfectly reasonable comment -- Lisp is powerful and expressive, but it is not an intuitive language for beginners.
Perhaps it seems that way to you because you are more familiar with Algol syntax than Lisp syntax, or because you have gone on to learn the more advanced Lisp features. But Scheme syntax and semantics, for example, are arguably at least as simple as that of an Algol language. Scheme has been used successfully as a first programming language in high school computer science courses: http://www.teach-scheme.org/
While I am sure that some high school courses may start with Scheme, it's certainly not a common beginner's language. I'm sure if I searched hard enough, I could find a high school class learning assembly -- but that doesn't make assembly a good beginner's language, either.
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Can we at least all agree that no one should be writing anything in a shell scripting language any longer? I'd be happy with just winning that battle.
Why are you against shell scripting languages ?
The horror. The horror.
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Why are you against shell scripting languages ?
Because I have seen the horrors that they wreak in a production system where they are responsible for mission critical logic. The horror. The horror.
The only reason to write in a language like C or Java today (over Python) is speed. And there are a very limited number of applications that require that sort of speed. There's no question that Linux should be written in a low level language, or a high-performance chess bot. But I'm incredulous when I see anyone write a website in even the relatively high-level Java. So, the author is right that we're getting more Py…
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Because I have seen the horrors that they wreak in a production system where they are responsible for mission critical logic. The horror. The horror.
Could you give examples of it ? You could also write horrible python or ruby code.
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Perhaps it seems that way to you because you are more familiar with Algol syntax than Lisp syntax, or because you have gone on to learn the more advanced Lisp features. But Scheme syntax and semantics, for example, are arguably at least as simple as that of an Algol language. Scheme has been used successfully as a first programming language in high school computer science courses: http://www.teach-scheme.org/
You're making a bad assumption about my skill and preferences, and trying to use it as an argument. That's a logical fallacy. My argument doesn't depend on my personal experience: Algol-derived languages resemble English, and are therefore easier for new programmers to learn. While I am sure that some high school courses may start with Scheme, it's certainly not a common beginner's language. I'm sure if I searched ha…
Here, for example, is typical C code, right out of K&R:
for (count = 0; count (for ([count (in-range 0 MAX)])
(display (format "\narr[~a] = ~a." count (vector-ref arr count))))