Common Lisp's block / return-from and unwind-protect

Common Lisp's block / return-from and unwind-protect
axisofeval.blogspot.com

SBCL is blazingly fast, CL abstractions are profound yet practical. The type system gives you power without pettiness. Language-oriented programming is a superpower in a world of cut and paste library-oriented programming. Image-based computing often allows one to skip the impedance mismatch with DBs. In many cases and you can just persist the data structures as they are or serialize them where needed. The tooling with Roswell, Quicklisp, Qlot, Doom Emacs, and Sly make prototyping and exploratory programming wiz by. CLOG, Reblocks and Hunchentoot provide powerful abstractions for web programming, but Phoenix with Liveview is probably better for most. The debugging experience is so insanely powerful it freaks me out and makes other systems look rudimentary. CLOS, the object system, is best of breed and makes most of the standard criticisms of OO programming moot. The homoiconic list-based syntax and prefix notation are beautiful and never get in your way. Parentheses are invisible. The condition system makes flow control and error handling in other systems seem rigid and convoluted. Aspect-oriented programming is just what we do, not a thing tacked on. Macros and the meta-object protocol allow you to build a language on top of Lisp that allows users to conceptualize problems using nouns and verbs they already know.

Drop into Coalton or Shen for strong, static typing where necessary, or April (hosted APL) for array wizardry that makes NumPy look like data-flow programming in Basic on a Timex Sinclair with a cassette drive. You can slice and dice whole datasets in a few characters of code. Bundle existing C libs with CFFI when you find a good one you need. Lisp-based systems are alive and grow and change as requirements do. It's harder to program yourself into a corner. Refactoring is continuous and mundane. In-source documentation is the right place for it, but Lispers tend to be shamefully lax in providing it. Shaaame! Newer Lispers tend to be better about docs--the culture is changing. Often you ask a question and get no response. Other times you get a detailed response from a legendary mind and just sit there in awe working your way through their thinking and feeling your inadequacy. The code is about as succinct as it can be to maintain readability. There are two camps on readability, some experienced Lispers find it harder, and most find it much easier to parse than ALGOL-derived syntax.

Once mastered, quick things are quick, hard things are straightforward, and impossible things are doable. This is a system for people who need, not want, to change the world. It gives single programmers and small teams the power to take on armies of bureaucratic programmers. But you have to be willing to break the mold, handle charges of elitism, not be required to justify your choice to managers, tolerate a small hiring pool, train newbies hard and long, not get freaked out using some libs that are stable and haven't been updated in years, deal with the pace of development of a small community, have the patience and joy in problem-solving to handle frequent bafflement, read a ton of source code rather than search the forums, and be willing to roll your own when needed. If you can handle all the idiosyncrasies and have a burning need for elegance and power, then CL will reward and surprise into until dementia takes you.

In short, all the good things you've heard are true, many of the standard critiques are uninformed, and problems people talk about that apply to most languages often don't apply.

Indeed, Lisp is no longer as revelatory as it once was, since many innovations have been adopted, even surpassed in specific cases. Still, no other language gives you the total package. The environment is far more than the sum of its features list. CL just gets out of your way and allows you to think about problems not programming.