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Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

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Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#111

Post by varjag »

pphysch wrote: post #94
hedora wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had the opposite experience with every python team I have interacted with. On top of it being slow and brittle, dependencies break, needlessly destabilizing stuff. Worse, the python team ends up having the hardest job, due to self-inflicted problems, so it either ends up with junior devs that don’t know better, or bitter senior devs that could be 10x more productive doing something else. As always, it varies f…

> dependencies break You can abuse dependencies in every language. This doesn't sound like a Python problem but a bad tech management problem (i.e. who signed off on allowing 'randomguy69/left-pad' as a dependency).

With Python it doesn't take abuse. You blink and the bloody thing rots away.

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#112

Post by pphysch »

varjag wrote: post #111
pphysch wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dependencies break You can abuse dependencies in every language. This doesn't sound like a Python problem but a bad tech management problem (i.e. who signed off on allowing 'randomguy69/left-pad' as a dependency).

With Python it doesn't take abuse. You blink and the bloody thing rots away.

Relative to what other language?

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#113

Post by traverseda »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #99
traverseda wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually think CPU usage is a concern here? Database performance and optimization, horizontal scaling, cache optimization (and cache invalidation) are the big problems. Security is also a big problem. The performance critical part is the database, and that at least used to be written in Java (cassandra db). Writing the bit of glue code between your high performance database and your fronted in cpp would introd…

We're not talking about 10% factors, but 10x factors between slow and fast languages. People say CPU usage doesn't matter when you're horizontally scaling, but horizontal scaling increases your ongoing operational costs, and you often are horizontally scaling precisely because your code is too slow.

What percentage of cpu time do you think would be spent in python land?

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#114

Post by abecedarius »

coldtea wrote: post #101
mchaver wrote: post #12

So I've read that they wrote it in Lisp at Paul Graham's request or to win favor. Does anyone know if writing your startup code in Lisp still has that benefit?

It never had any particular benefit to write your startup code in Lisp. That myth came from a few posts by a person who was a huge proponent of Lisp, in an era were web (front and backend) development was much easier, and web-related libraries were lacking in all languages (so it wasn't like Lisp's smaller popularity would hurt you there). It's an example of one. If they didn't get lucky and Yahoo! bought some other…

Lisp-vs-mainstream was just a very different comparison in the 90s versus now. Most of Lisp's advantages have been incorporated into its big competitors. At the time the advantages were nothing to sneer at, even though there were counterpoints then too.

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#115

Post by coldtea »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #105
coldtea wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never had any particular benefit to write your startup code in Lisp. That myth came from a few posts by a person who was a huge proponent of Lisp, in an era were web (front and backend) development was much easier, and web-related libraries were lacking in all languages (so it wasn't like Lisp's smaller popularity would hurt you there). It's an example of one. If they didn't get lucky and Yahoo! bought some other…

> Statistically speaking, 99.9% of succesful startups were written not in any Lisp, and 0.1% of them in Lisp. I think the point that PG was making wasn't that P(lisp|success) > P(blub|success) is what's key but that P(success|lisp) > P(success|blub) > What's more, Yahoo! even scrapped all their Lisp code soon after. I'm hardly a PG fanboy, but I have to say this is exactly what's expected in PG's original post on the…

>I think the point that PG was making wasn't that P(lisp|success) > P(blub|success) is what's key but that P(success|lisp) > P(success|blub)

Perhaps, but that was handwaving from an example of one.

Would Lisp startups dominate if more people did Lisp startups?

I seriously doubt so, but in any case, the examples we see are people not doing Lisp startups and succeeding just fine - with the language used hardly being a serious factor (compared to timing, feature set, user adoption, VC interest, and mere dumb luck).

>Interviewing at startups used to be exciting, now the vast majority feel like they're run by people who couldn't manage to get a director role at a FAANG.

Isn't the latter true for most real hacker types?

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#116

Post by lenkite »

nurettin wrote: post #58
wiseowise wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ looks very handsome. Usually someone will pop up showing crazy meta programming template code and use it a straw man to declare cpp=bad.

I've bee using C++ since the late 90s, and namespaces are still annoying.

Just use `using namespace std;` inside your function and C++ suddenly becomes nice.

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#117

Post by defen »

lc9er wrote: post #93
mchaver wrote: post #12

So I've read that they wrote it in Lisp at Paul Graham's request or to win favor. Does anyone know if writing your startup code in Lisp still has that benefit?

Yes. The best decision they made was to flatter a billionaire’s ego. Then Reddit largely succeeded despite them.

I doubt pg was a billionaire in 2005

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#118

Post by varjag »

pphysch wrote: post #112
varjag wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Python it doesn't take abuse. You blink and the bloody thing rots away.

Relative to what other language?

Any other than JS/node really. But since this thread mentions Common Lisp, its package management system rarely blows up in your face.

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#119

Post by vindarel »

Here's an updated version with DB tables (PostGres) that runs: https://github.com/tamurashingo/reddit1.0/

    Require:

    CommonLisp (tested on SBCL)
    PostgreSQL
    memcached
    smtp server

    CL-USER> (reddit:startup-reddit)
    #
Writing a CL web app today is definitely doable. You won't find a framework with bells and whistles (yet), but all the required building blocks: web servers (Hunchentoot or Clack, like WSGI for Python), choice in templating engines (Djula is Django-like and I like it a lot), etc.

To replace JS a maximum I use HTMX which is language and framework agnostic, life is beautiful.

In the end, you can build a static binary with all the static assets, send it to your server and run it.

- https://github.com/fukamachi/clack

- https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/web.html

- https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl#web-frameworks

Re: Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

#120

Post by jcpst »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #105
coldtea wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never had any particular benefit to write your startup code in Lisp. That myth came from a few posts by a person who was a huge proponent of Lisp, in an era were web (front and backend) development was much easier, and web-related libraries were lacking in all languages (so it wasn't like Lisp's smaller popularity would hurt you there). It's an example of one. If they didn't get lucky and Yahoo! bought some other…

> Statistically speaking, 99.9% of succesful startups were written not in any Lisp, and 0.1% of them in Lisp. I think the point that PG was making wasn't that P(lisp|success) > P(blub|success) is what's key but that P(success|lisp) > P(success|blub) > What's more, Yahoo! even scrapped all their Lisp code soon after. I'm hardly a PG fanboy, but I have to say this is exactly what's expected in PG's original post on the…

> We've had a pipeline churning out devs for many years now. The ones that are great at leetcode and playing the game go to FAANG, the ones that aren't go to startups.

What about companies with a technology department that aren’t FAANG or a startup? Isn’t that where most devs go?

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